


may you leave the shore

by TheItalianSalad97



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DCU
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, BAMF Laurel Lance, Canon Bisexual Character, Cheating, Codependency, Drowning, Drug Addiction, F/M, Gen, Lance Family Feels, Laurel Lance has issues, Oliver gets slapped, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Questionable Choices are made, Recreational Drug Use, Rehabilitation, Sara Lance has HUGE issues, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:01:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25289500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheItalianSalad97/pseuds/TheItalianSalad97
Summary: In a world with no vigilantes or superpowers, Laurel Lance goes into rehab, Sara Lance still leaves on the Gambit, Oliver Queen gets (rightfully) slapped in the face once or twice and life is not worse but it's not better either.The next day she wakes up with her spine completely stiff. Her neck hurts, her face still brings the signs of the beating she took during that fist fight at the bar. She presses her hand to the plexiglass that divides her from her sister.In the pale morning light, a small, yellow canary softly flies by and lands right outside of Sara’s window.
Relationships: (mentioned) Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe, (mentioned) Sara Lance/Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	may you leave the shore

**Author's Note:**

> three things:
> 
> 1) wear your fucking masks  
> 2) Laurel Lance deserved better  
> 3) title from - oh come on, you know where the title comes from, right?
> 
> let me know about any mistake.

**I’m here without, baby**

**but you’re still on my lonely mind.**

**I think about you, baby**

**and I dream about you all the time.**

**I’m here without you, baby**

**but you’re still with me in my dreams.**

3 doors down, here without you.

Laurel remembers everything.

And for all that is true in life, Laurel can’t pinpoint the exact moment in which her family ceased to be happy because it’s just due to a convergence of moments and situations, and it is with extreme regret that she always admits that it was partially her fault.

No one in her family is innocent. Quentin Lance is a loving father, devoted to his job and family, whose genes sadly carry serious addiction along with them; Dinah Lance is a mother who loves her researches and job as a teacher perhaps a little too much. Laurel is a rainbow baby - a child born after a miscarriage, the happiness after the nightmare, the light to the darkness. For the first five years of her life, she’s the center of her parents’ attentions and they spoil her, coddle her and spend all of their time doting on her, at least until Sara comes along. They name her after the biblical Sara, princess, an angel, and Laurel remembers the first time she sees her, attached at their mother’s chest like a vampire, a succubus, small and wrinkly and full of freckles, her face all red and her eyes blown because she’s almost killed herself with the umbilical cord in her own mother’s womb. Laurel remembers thinking that was a sign that Sara should’ve never been born at all, and she remembers when they take Sara home and Sara is a fussy baby, cries constantly as if being alive hurts her and their parents are always around Sara, worrying about Sara, caring for Sara and Laurel just falls into the oblivion, just for a little while. Sara cries every night and Laurel clearly recalls the first time she’s able to soothe her sister’s moans. She remembers marching into Sara’s nursery before her parents wake up, with the intent of smothering her sister with the first pillow available, and Sara is there, wailing, red-faced, tears strained and ready to explode and Laurel remembers slipping her thumb past Sara’s lips and feeling her sister’s toothless gums munching on her finger, and her cries subsiding. And maybe that’s when it all starts - when this morbid relationship that binds her to her baby sister comes to life. Years pass and their mother gets a job promotion and she spends most of her time at the University and Laurel has to raise Sara, act half as a sister half as a mother because their mother’s never home and Quentin has no idea how a Tampax works and even if he did, for how much of a good father he is, he couldn’t survive the awkwardness of explaining such a thing to his prepubescent younger daughter. And so, Laurel has to do it - has to hold Sara as she cries and assure her that she’s not going to bleed out during the night and explain to her exactly how that _thing_ between her legs works and that she has to be careful and be strong and to never listen to anything any boy tells her or promises her.

They grow up attached at the hip and people all around the neighbourhood and at school are always saying how beautiful and nice the Lance sisters are while Laurel is pretty sure that, like every beautiful thing, they are both rotten inside and that they’ve been rotting probably since eight grade.

Laurel remembers the first time she has a drink (she is fourteen), and the first time she makes out with Oliver Queen (she is fifteen), and the first time they sleep together (seventeen) because she is head over heels for him and he is as equally crazy about her, and she remembers the first time that Sara, freshly out of her sixteenth birthday, comes to her crying and saying, Laur I’m late, I fucked up, I need to take a pregnancy test, please help me I’m so scared, please. It’s the first time of many and as they grown up, Sara jumps from bed to bed and from boys to girls to boys to girls, and Laurel jumps from bottle to bottle to pills, getting high in the bathroom at Tommy’s parties, squeezing eye drops in, trying to fool Oliver into not seeing how wasted or drunk she is, and in the end it doesn’t work.

Pills, and alcohol, the blissfully ignorance of her parents and Oliver’s devotion, love and help, accompany her through College and as soon as she gets her degree in May, Laurel says, I’m done, I need help. She voluntarily goes into rehab and she leaves her sister, her boyfriend, her family and this cursed shitty city behind.

She’s got a fresh degree in her pocket but she’s got no plans for the future. She’s just trying to survive.

Turns out, surviving is much more harder than actually living.

She’s been in rehab for six months when it happens.

She’s been living outside the city, far away from her family and all of her affects, sharing this house with ten more addicts and their supervisors. They have a routine: get up early, get methadone, therapy sessions and lots of listening and lots of talking about their feelings and experiences. Laurel hates it at first, now she’s used to it. They take turns making breakfast. That morning, she’s setting the table as Felicity cooks pancakes. Felicity is also her roommate; black hair and piercings, she’s an hacker and used to be a meth-head and she’s been in rehab only for a couple of months. Laurel remember the night they brought Felicity in - she was feral, hitting left and right, kicking, spitting and scratching and Laurel doesn’t know what she saw in her but she immediately liked Felicity, and that’s why she requested to be put in the same room with her, so that she could look after the younger girl, because Laurel is a big sister and that’s her curse and her blessing. There is something about Felicity that reminds Laurel of Sara and that always will.

The TV is quietly murmuring in the background and no’s really paying attention to it, not until Felicity says, “Holy shit”, and immediately reaches for the remote to raise the volume.

At first, all Laurel sees are bits and pieces of amateurs videos of a drowning yacht somewhere in the ocean, EMTs running around and helicopters flying over them and it takes her at least a bunch of seconds before her ears can tune in on what the journalist is saying, and by the time she hears, she wishes she’d never did.

“ _Mr Queen's yacht appear to have suffered an engine malfunction which caused the oil leak that triggered the explosion and the subsequent sinking. The authorities and the Navy are currently looking for other survivors but the situation appears to be desperate. The only survivors, for now, is Robert Queen’s older son Oliver. Mr Queen himself, daughter’s Thea and family’s friend Thomas Merlyn have been found dead at the scene”._

Ollie’s dad always loved that fucking yacht. The last time Laurel spoke to her boyfriend (can she still call him that if they see each other only for a few hours once a week?) was last week - he told her he was going out on the yacht with his dad, Thea and Tommy for the weekend as he always did since they were kids. Laurel nodded and kissed him and told him to have fun.

Apparently he forgot to let her in on one small detail - Sara.

“ _Nineteen years old Sara Lance, another one of the passengers, has been reported as missing. Her body hasn’t been found yet”._

That’s when Laurel starts falling and the phones starts ringing and it suddenly feels like it’s the fourth of July and there’s nothing to be happy about. She doesn’t smashes her face on the floor only because Felicity quickly wraps an arm around her waist and gently helps Laurel sit down in one corner of the kitchen. Laurel can’t blink, can’t move, can’t breath. Her brain is working over time, connecting dots she never wanted to connect in the first place. Her heart aches and burns and she starts crying, for Oliver, for Thea and Tommy and Ollie’s dad. And Sara.

Sara who no one knew was going to board that boat in the first place.

Laurel throws up all over the floor.

She goes back home, of course. Her supervisor is skeptic about letting her go, fears that the stress of such a situation might trigger her addictions again, and Laurel agrees but there’s no God on earth of haven that will ever stop her from going back home. Her supervisor lets her go. She reunites with her parents and they cry and cry, trying to understand, but some things you just have to let go and wait before you can understand.

It goes like this: they have to wait hours and hours before someone calls them and tells them that they’ve found Sara and that when they found here she’d been floating around in the shallow water, half on the shore half in the water and that she had no pulse and they had to give her CPR for more than one minute because Sara fucking drowned. Sara drowned. And then they said that it will take days to fly Sara back home because she has to have brain surgery ASAP and that they won’t move her from the hospital she’s in now until she’s stable.

Her mother cries and cries and so does her father late at night when no one can see him, and to fight the pain and to avoid thinking about why Sara was on that yacht with her boyfriend, Laurel spends the nights in Sara’s room, sleeping in her bed and hugging her pillow just to smell Sara’s sweet scent and she pretends she’s finally home from rehab, holding her little sister after months of being gone - and they’re happy and okay and everyone is alive.

She distractedly watches as Thea’s, Tommy’s and Mr. Queen’s bodies are returned home in some big ceremony as if they were some heroes and not some spoiled rich people who blew up on a fucking yacht worth billions of dollars. Oliver is there, too. He hugs his mother and cries as he touches the coffins. He’s walking on his own legs, bruises and cuts on his face and he’s got the darkest circles under his eyes but nonetheless, he’s well and alive and Laurel _hates_ him.

He calls her. More than once. Laurel never answers.

She doesn’t go to the funerals. Her parents do, mostly out of respect than anything else; they stop for condolences and leave as soon as the function is done. Laurel cries in her room for the entire morning. The thing is: she and Oliver met and fell love when they were in high school and they never let go of each other. They always had each other’s back, even when Laurel was drinking everyone under the table and popping pills like it was gummy bears. Laurel watched Ollie’s younger sister Thea grow up and there was this complicity between them, the one that inexplicably bonds a young woman to her boyfriend’s little sister. Laurel would help Thea with her homework and cover for her when she had to sneak out to meet some cute boy. And then there’s Tommy, Ollie’s best friend. Tommy was a flirt and an idiot but he was a good listener and a loyal friend and Laurel pretended to hate him only because that was their inside joke. They bullied each other like cat and mouse and yet would’ve died for one another.

And now Thea is dead and so are Tommy and Ollie’s father and all that’s left of their previous lives is nothing, ashes, pieces of old photographies abandoned in some dusty box under the bed.

Sara, or rather her body (Laurel doesn’t know how much of her sister actually survived) is flown back to Starling City’s General Hospital on a gloomy morning. The doctors have to run tests and scans on her and check out her vitals and they prod and poke at her like she’s some kind of guinea pig and it takes hours before they let them see her. A nurse escorts them to the room and there’s a tall man with a white coat in front of the door, waiting. Laurel’s grown used to doctors in the last few months. She used to be scared of them, when she was younger. Now, she doesn’t even see them. Addicts couldn’t care less about doctors in white coats. Addicts are mostly deaf. They listen only when it’s in their interests, and they only listen to what they want to hear.

Right now, Laurel wants to hear.

He introduces himself and holds their hands and he looks kind, like he actually loves his job but all Laurel wants is for him to just step away and let them see Sara. On the other hand, they do probably need an insight about what they’re going to be facing inside that room because something tells Laurels it’s not gonna be a pretty sight.

“I’m sorry we have to meet under such tragic circumstances, Detective Lance” he says, as if there’s any other way of meeting a fucking brain surgeon. He goes on, saying, “I won’t lie. It took the EMTs around two minutes to revive you daughter. We don’t know for how long she was without oxygen and she never regained consciousness after being revived. When drowning, brain cells start dying pretty fast and-“.

“Is she ever gonna wake up?” Quentin asks, tears in his eyes.

The doctor presses his lips together. “The first brain surgery was successful but since she’s been brought here I’ve noticed an increasing swelling in the left hemisphere of her brain. She will probably need another surgery soon. Although it is highly possible that Miss Lance could regain consciousness, there’s no way of knowing what kind of brain damage she has suffered. If I had to guess, Broca’s area is the one that looks more compromised. I can-”.

“Broca’s area controls speech stuff” Laurel distractedly says, recalling an old article she read during her first year or College.

The surgeon nods in her direction, smiling sadly. “It does”.

No one adds anything else. The implication of what she’s just said and had confirmed is already enough. The doctor eventually shows them into the room. Everything’s so white and spartan here. Laurel is kind of used to the latter. The first three months of rehab are the hardest. The drugs leave you system without being replaced, the blood starts flowing again without the alcohol’s aid and it just hurts like you’re being sliced in two by a sword. Your brain splits, you body doesn’t feels like it’s yours anymore. They make you spend the first three months inside a room with nothing in it but a bed, so that you won’t try to slice your wrists during the night or murder one of your roommates because of the cravings. Yes, Laurel knows what it feels like to be in a naked room - she’s never wished the same for her sister.

The sight is, in fact, as heart-wrenching as she’d imagined.

“Oh, Sara” Dinah cries, almost collapsing in her husband’s arms.

Laurel doesn’t remember the last time she saw her father cry like this, this freely - not even when his beloved daughter confessed of being an alcoholic and an addict.

What Laurel sees on that bed is not Sara - it’s just a body of someone that resembles her sweet baby sister. And yet, it is Sara - she smells like Sara, is Sara’s height and weight, same freckles, same features. Her skin is so white it’s almost blinding. She’s so pale, worse than a ghost - a corpse. She has a tube shoved down her throat and about a hundred millions other tubes coming out of her arms and sides, and her lips are all broken and red, bloody; they shaved half of her hair and her head is all wrapped in gauze.

“She was breathing on her own when she arrived at the previous hospital” the doctor explains, “but we prefer to keep her in a coma to help her body heal. The machine is breathing for her, right now. Visiting hours will be over soon but I will tell the nurse to let you stay a little longer. Have a good day”.

He leaves with a small nod of his head, closing the door very slowly, avoiding any noise.

Dinah collapses on the chair right next to the bed. Laurel looks around for a few seconds and realises that they’ve been left alone with a ghost, a shell, something that has already died and that she doubts can ever be brought back. For a few minutes there’s only silence, deadly silence broken only by the rhythmic noise of the machine that’s keeping Sara alive.

“Oh, baby” Quentin sighs, bending down to place a kiss on Sara’s forehead, “she’s so cold” he says.

The dead always are, Laurel wants to tell him, but she doesn’t. Instead, she just grab the other chair in the room and sits down on the other side of the bed. She grabs Sara’s hand, so frail, pale and cold, and she brings it to her mouth, leaving a kiss on the smooth skin. She starts crying at some point, but she doesn’t really pay attention to it.

“S-She drowned, she-” Dinah stutters.

“Mom”.

“It must’ve been so painful” she cries.

Laurel bites her lip so hard she starts bleeding. She doesn’t wanna hear. She never wants to know. She never wanted for Sara to experience any kind of pain, and yet here they are. Laurel might be a drunk and an addict whose boyfriend cheated on her but Sara died.

Sara fucking died and there’s no fixing that.

“That’s-. We don’t know, we-“ Quentin struggles, “She might’ve passed out before falling into the water”.

Somehow Laurel doubts it. Good things never happen to the Lance family. Not anymore. To wish for Sara’s death to have been painless is just wishful thinking - they all know it didn’t happen that way. Sara fell into the stone cold water or maybe drowned inside the yacht and she probably tried to fight as her body grew colder and colder, paralysed, and she felt each drop of water reversing into her body until she had no more air left to breath. She probably felt herself dying and it makes Laurel want to wish she could give her life for her sister’s.

Sara might’ve fucked her boyfriend but she deserved good things. All she ever had since the day she was born is pain.

There’s a knock on the door. Laurel doesn’t even turn to see who it is, thinking it’s a doctor. She wants to make sure Sara is warm enough even though she’s not sure her sister can actually feel anything. Her parents grow silent, though, and it’s the unnatural lack of their acknowledging whoever’s at the door that pushes Laurel to turn around.

She finds herself face to face with Oliver Queen.

At least, he looks remorseful enough, like he knows that he shouldn’t be here at all. He’s holding a bunch of flowers in his hands and his blond hair fall all over his face and forehead and he looks like he hasn’t seen the sunlight or a shower since the moment he stepped foot back on the ground. Laurel wants to punch him. Oliver’s eyes go from Sara’s still body to Quentin to Dinah and eventually they stop on Laurel and her wet cheeks. Her eyes may be crying but they also have fire in them, and so much anger.

Oliver swallows.

“I’m sorry, I-. I just wanted to know how Sara was doing” he says. “Nobody would tell me anything”.

Laurel stands up. She quickly wipes her cheeks, trying to dry all the tears she’s been crying for days. She takes a deep breath, musters all the courage she has, and then she gestures for Ollie to follow her outside of this small room and right into the hallway. He follows her, docile and submissive and it’s always been like this between them. No one stands up to Laurel Lance, nor her classmates or her friends, certainly not her boyfriends. She’s always been on top - when they were fighting or fucking, or simply talking, and now Laurel wonders if that’s not one of the reasons why Oliver felt like he had to go and look for someone else to share his bed with as soon as Laurel was out of the picture.

She stops at the end of the hallway. Oliver stands right in front of her. Laurel looks up at him. He looks beat, in his jeans and black button down. Part of Laurel wants to hug him and hold him, let him rest his head on his chest, because Ollie is just her age and in one night he lost his father, his sister and his best friend. The other part of Laurel, though, just wants to smash his face into the wall.

She can’t stop herself.

She slaps him so hard her hand hurts. Oliver remains still.

“You fucked my sister” Laurel says.

She shoves him, hitting his chest and again, Oliver doesn’t react.

“You fucked my sister and you brought her on your fucking yacht and she drowned” Laurel says. “She might die”.

Oliver swallows, tears in his eyes - it’s not enough to quench Laurel’s anger.

“Laurel” he starts, slowly. He can’t look at her in the eyes. “I’m so, so sorry, I-”.

“I don’t wanna hear it” she replays. “I don’t want to see you ever again. Stay away from Sara. Stay away from my family. If you come here again, I will kill you”.

“Laurel, please” he begs.

She leaves. Oliver doesn’t follow.

She goes back to the Center in the morning because there’s really not much she can do. Sara is in a coma and she can’t hear nor speak or feel and they’re all useless. She needs things from her room and most of all, Laurel needs some distance. She feels like she hasn’t been breathing properly since the yacht went down. She needs to catch up to her own thoughts. She grabs some of her stuff from the drawers and stashes into and old ratty handbag and then she stops, just for one second, and sits down on her bed. The room is empty. Felicity is not around. She might be to one of the usual morning meetings. Laurel’s been excused from those with the promise of still attending her AA meetings twice a week.

Laurel runs a hand trough her hair. Oh, how she wishes she’d OD’d on some of the many pills she used to take, right now. She licks her lips, then bites the inside of her cheek.

Felicity’s bed is right next to Laurel’s. Felicity has her own closet and nightstand and her own desk and Laurel knows where she keeps everything. There are no secrets among drug addicts. Laurel swallows, getting up on her feet. There’s only one thing that supervisors let them use, albeit under tight surveillance, and that thing is pot - it helps taking the edge off. She grabs Felicity’s full stash, knowing she won’t be able to smoke it all, of course. Then, she makes her way to the roof. That’s her place. Nobody ever bothers her up there. The roof has been her safe place since the first day she came here. That first night, shaking with tremors and chills, sweating though all of her clothes, she came up here and just stared at the sky for hours and wondered why she’s never known just how many starts there actually were up there. She could never see the starts from Starling City.

Her fingers tremble as she rolls the paper and at some point she starts crying and she must look so ugly, so far away from the person she once used to be. Laurel lights the joint up and brings her knees to her chest. The sky is so bright and the sun is warm. She’s spent the summer in rehab and time has passed, season have gone by and cold and snow will soon take over. Laurel thought this was gonna be the summer of her life. Finally done with law school, she’d wanted to go some tropical island with Ollie and tan on the shiny white beach, drinking mojitos and margaritas and making love to Ollie all night long in their fucking bungalow on the beach.

Of course, doing those things would require one to be sober and lately Laurel’s been more worried about resisting the impulse to drain whatever bottle she can get her hands on than to book a vacation to the Caribbean. Laurel sobs, running a hand through her hair. Her make up melts like snow in the sun and drools down her cheeks, under her eyes, makes her look like a grotesque initiation of her past self.

“You stole my pot, you thief”.

Felicity sits down right next to her. Laurel wipes her cheeks and offers Felicity the half smoked joint in her hand. The hacker gladly accepts the offer.

“How’s your sister?” Felicity whispers, as if saying those words out loud might hurt more.

“Not good. It’s bad, it’s… It’s very bad” Laurel replies, swallowing.

Felicity nods, rolling a strand of black dyed hair around her finger. “And your boyfriend? I mean, he did cheat on you, so I guess he’s an ex boyfriend now? I’m sorry I didn’t mean to sound like I-”.

Felicity tends to lose herself in her own mind and speeches and she talks so fast that it’s impossible to stop her. Laurel grabs her hand, tangling their fingers together. Felicity stops talking. Laurel sobs, covering her face with one hand as tears just go by in an infinite flood that just doesn’t seem like it’s gonna stop any time soon.

“She went on that boat with him” Laurel says, sniffling. “I hate them both. They both betrayed me. And I feel so horrible for saying this. Sara might die, Felicity, and here I am and I’m so fucking pissed at both of them”.

“T-That’s okay” Felicity stutters, wrapping an arm around Laurel’s shoulders.

“It’s not okay. It’s fucked up” Laurel replies. “We’re all a bunch of fuck ups”.

“Now, that” Felicity starts, “that sounds about right, actually”.

Laurel grabs the joint from her friend and takes a long, deep drag, closing her eyes. She has to go soon, but before she goes, she has one last thing to do.

“Do you want to come with me? I have to say goodbye to a few people” Laurel says, wiping the tears from her face with the hem of her t-shirt, trying to to mess up the dark make up that’s left. She gets up on her feet and extends her hand to Felicity.

“You know I’m not allowed to leave, yet”.

“We’ll make up something. Trust me”.

Her supervisor lets her go and lets Laurel take Felicity with her, but on one condition: Felicity has to be back in exactly two hours. Laurel thinks she can definitely make that. They stop for flowers, first thing. Laurel buys lots of them because she has no idea what kind of flowers Tommy or Thea would like. She’s not worried about Ollie’s father too much. She might have dated Oliver for years but Oliver’s own relationship with his dad was a strained one and Laurel had none with the man. Thea is the first stop. There’s tons of flowers and posters and stuff on her grave, brought by her family and friends and probably her boyfriend, Roy. Laurel hasn’t seen Roy in what feels like a lifetime. She knows he loved Thea, though, and the fact that she died knowing that there were lots of people who loved her makes Laurel’s heart a little less heavy.

Tommy is a different story. Laurel kneels in front of the headstone, touches her fingers to his nave carved on the cold surface. Sara’s name might end up on one of these pretty soon. Laurel presses her lips together as she leaves the flowers on the ground. She bites her lip. Tommy had a horrible father and yet he turned out a pretty decent person and a good friend. When they were nineteen, Tommy had a crush on her. He never made a move on his feelings. Only once, while he was driving her back at Ollie’s and she was drunk off her ass, Tommy gently brushed her cheek with his fingers and said, “You know, I would love you better. I would never hurt you, Laurel. I would never leave you”.

The thing is, Laurel had been already hurting. She’s been hurting since the day she was born. Eventually they all moved on. Tommy found another girl and Laurel found another glass to loose herself into. The last time she head from Tommy was through a phone call. He said he wanted to come visit her soon, but that Ollie wanted to go out with the boat and he’d been coerced into going, too. Laurel told him she knew he was lying and that she didn’t mind. She told him to go and have fun and now they’re here.

“‘Lis, I want you to meet my best friend” Laurel says, waving at Felicity, encouraging her to come closer. “Tommy was a slut and a frat boy, and he was my greatest confident and I loved him very much. He gave the best parties”.

Felicity kneels next to her and places her cheek on top of Laurel’s shoulder.

“We made all the wrong choices, Tommy” Laurel whispers. “We were never really happy and now it’s too late. We’ve always been doomed, but I think that if someone deserved an happy ending it was you. I’m so sorry, Tommy. I was the shittiest of friends. I hope you can forgive me, one day”.

Laurel swallows, running a hand though her hair.

“Watch over me, Tommy” she prays, “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it”.

She tells him goodbye for the last time. Then, Laurel buys Felicity dinner - milkshake and fries and drives her back to the house. She will have to come back and finish her rehab program, soon, but not today. Not for a while. Laurel comes back to an empty and haunted house in Starling City. Her parents are at the hospital. Laurel sits in the middle of her room and she stares at the cracks in the white wall in front of her and she prays to God that she makes it.

For the first time in her life, she prays to God to hear her.

The next few weeks are an endless nightmare.

Dinah and Quentin have to work and they all split the hours to spend at the hospital. Laurel’s there most of the time, and when she’s at her AA meetings, her father usually takes over because in those days Dinah always has some classes to teach. They get stuck in a loop: wake up, stare at Sara’s unmoving body for the whole day, eat, go to sleep, rinse and repeat.

It is tiring and heavy on the soul. Laurel can feel her heart breaking a little more every day she steps foot into the hospital, every day she hold Sara’s cold and dead hand. The noises of the machines now work as a lullaby and Laurel doesn’t even notice the nurses getting in and out of the room to change Sara’s meds and IV’s anymore. There’s gunk and dirt that stick to her sister’s eyes and under her fingernails and every once in a while Laurel washes her with a wet cloth; they can’t touch her too much because Sara’s body is too weak and there’s nothing they can do for her. They just have to wait and the waiting is horrible, it makes Laurel’s brain explode.

One morning she arrives at the hospital only to find that Sara’s room is empty. Laurel nearly has a heart attack. One kind nurse sees her panicking in the hallway and tells her that Sara’s been moved to another room on the fourth floor and that their mother’s already here. Sara’s new room is huge, spacious and full of light, so much that Sara herself looks a little less pale. There’s flowers everywhere and box of chocolates and her mother is trying to fit a vase of lilies on top of the nightstand right next to Sara’s bed.

“What the hell?” Laurel says, dropping her bag on the floor.

Dinah sighs, gently touching Sara’s cheek with her hand. “Apparently Oliver Queen is paying for this room, now. And he also sent all the flowers”.

Laurel presses her lips together, swallowing, almost not believe the words her mother’s just said. How presumptuous, how so Oliver Queen, king of the city, protector of the poor, the losers and the damaged. She hates him. Laurel has never hated someone more in her life. There’s so much rage inside of her, toward Oliver and toward her own comatose sister, that Laurel doesn’t know what to do with it. She feels like she’s going to explode. Slowly, she runs a hand trough her hair and takes a deep breath.

“Alright, well… all this stuff needs to go” she says. “I’ll get rid of the flowers and you can ask the nurses if they can get Sara back to her old room”.

Dinah hesitates and Laurel already hates her for it. She knows what’s coming.

“Leave your sister out of your businesses with Oliver” Dinah says. “If he’s willing to pay, let’s just take it. It’s his fault, after all, isn’t it? Plus, this room is so nice. Sara will be much more comfortable here”.

Laurel raises her eyebrows.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, mom, but Sara is a vegetable” Laurel replies. Dinah makes a face, ready to talk back to her and probably tell her how much of a shitty daughter she is, but Laurel doesn’t let her, “Look at her” she says, pointing at Sara’s body on the bad. “I don’t think she cares much for rooms, right now. And she might be the victim here but she’s not innocent and you know it. Sara went on that boat because she _wanted_ it. My boyfriend cheated on me with my sister and my own sister slept with my fucking boyfriend. They both went behind my back in the most disgusting way and you want me to accept gifts from Oliver?”.

Dinah doesn’t reply. She sits down on the chair, takes her head in her hands. Laurel stares at her, at this mother. She’s never doubted that their mother loved them very much, but she can’t deny, that during the years, Dinah lost so many important milestones in the lives of their daughters. She wasn’t there when Sara, timidly over dinner, told Laurel and their father that she also liked girls and that she hoped that they wouldn’t hate her for it. She never noticed how serious Laurel’s drinking habit was, not the pills suddenly disappearing from the bathroom’s cabinet. Hell, she was even peacefully oblivious about that time Laurel sneaked Oliver into her bedroom and night and fucked him barely two doors down the corridor from her.

Dinah is an absent mother without being absent. She’s there but she just can’t see.

Laurel runs a hand through her hair.

“Did you know?” She asks, “that they were seeing each other?”.

Her mother shakes her head, looking at Sara. “No, I didn’t”.

“And daddy?”.

“He didn’t, either”.

Laurel bites her lip. “How? She was living at home, she was there, right in front of you, she-”.

“Laurel” Dinah sighs. “You know Sara. She’s very good at hiding things when she wants to. She dated that Sharpe girl for two years and we only found out about it when the girl moved away”.

Laurel pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes because _she_ knew. Laurel knew about Ava and about all of Sara’s hookups and about all of her shenanigans. Laurel knew everything, she noticed everything and the moment she left, everyone else revealed themselves for what they were: blind, incapable of dealing with Sara’s fucked up ways of life.

“Whatever, uh… You can go, if you want. I know you have that meeting with the board. I’m gonna stay with Sara” Laurel says, trying to fake a smile the best she can.

“Are you sure?” Dinah asks. “I won’t be long”.

“Yeah, it’s fine” Laurel nods. “I’m just gonna be one sec and throw these flowers in the trash”.

Where they fucking belong, along with the man who sent them.

Later, when she’s all alone with Sara for the first time since the news and for the first time since she went to rehab, Laurel sits at her baby sister’s side and tries to fix, at least a little, the bird nest her hair’s turned into. She runs a hand down her cheek and Sara’s still so cold, her skin is starting to break out and her lips are all chapped and dry, ready to bleed. She’s ugly, yellow and pale - a completely different person from the Sara Laurel remembers.

Fucking your sister’s boyfriend and drowning does that to a person. It takes so little to change a person, it doesn’t even seem real. Laurel bows her head, rests her forehead against Sara’s hand and she waits, as if by waiting, she hopes that Sara would just open her hand and gently touch her face at some point - the sweetest of illusions. Laurel knows it won’t happen. Sara can’t even properly breath by herself. She’s not getting up from this bed any time soon.

Laurel runs a hand through her hair and takes Sara’s hand in hers.

“Why did you do it, mh? Why would you do this to me, Sar?” She whispers. “Where did I do wrong? You have to tell me Sara, because I don’t know. Sara, Sara… always riding the biggest waves, always with your hands in some messy shit - or rather _on_ someone this time, I guess”.

Laurel swallows.

“Us sharing everything didn’t include my boyfriend. Look at where that brought you, stupid”.

She never gets an answer to anything. Laurel stays in silence, crying a little and then getting angry and then crying some more. Being in an hospital is a junkie’s dream and nightmare at the same time. The only thing keeping her from scavenging the pharmacy is literally Sara. She wants to be with Sara, now, doesn’t want to miss anything. She kisses Sara’s cheek and then her forehead, hoping she can feel some of her warmth, hoping that it will make her feel better.

She holds Sara’s hands and wishes for better days.

Those days never come.

They get Sara back to her old room, because that’s how it should be.

On Monday, she starts seizing and it’s the most scaring thing Laurel’s ever witnessed. She keeps having seizures throughout the entire day and the doctors still can’t figure out what’s wrong with her. They take her for scans and exams, rolling her around the hospital like she’s some kind of toy or entertainment. Laurel just can’t stand it. As soon as her father comes around, she literally runs from the hospital.

She hits the first bar she can find.

She sits at the counter for what feel like hours, grabbing the edge of it, staring at the fair share of bottle she could pick from. She eats at least an entire bowl of peanuts. The bartender stops asking what she wants to drink after the second time. She’s clearly not the first recovering alcoholic who strolled by this place. Eventually Laurel asks for a glass of sparkling water. The bartender smiles at her and happily pours her a glass. He’s cute - the bartender. He must be in his early twenties and he has long hair, which reminds her of Ollie a little, but not too much. He looks kind and he’s never inappropriate with any costumer. At some point, he offers her a cup of coffee and Laurel smiles at him and even though she doesn’t feel happy at all, it feels good to be finally smiling at someone. She stays ‘till the guy’s shift ends. They fuck in the backroom. She doesn’t ask him his name. He says he can tell she comes from the hospital nearby, says he’s learned to tell, that he can see it in the people’s eyes. Laurel doesn’t deny it.

He never asks her name. Laurel leaves him with a kiss on his cheek and that’s it.

On Tuesday they find out Sara’s brain is basically exploding inside of her skull. She needs another brain surgery. By lunch time Sara starts pissing blood. They say her kidneys are failing, that she’s probably gonna need a transplant but that her body is too weak to take on this many surgeries. The family has to make a decision. They decide to go ahead with the brain surgery. It takes hours and the doctors say the surgery is successful, that the swelling has gone down but that the seizures might stay as a direct consequences of the brain damage Sara suffered from the drowning.

In short - Sara is now an epileptic.

Oliver sends another bunch of flowers. This time Laurel doesn’t even waste time throwing everything in the trash. She directly knocks at Oliver’s door. He lives in a fucking manor, and thank God his mother isn’t around to watch Laurel smack him in the face with carnations. 

“I thought I had made myself clear” Laurel says. “You must stay away from us. Stop sending this shit, stop trying. Disappear, Oliver”.

Oliver swallows, staring at the flows on the floor. He nods.

“I’m sorry, I-” he stutters. “I just-. My mom heard that Sara’s not doing good and I just wanted-”.

Laurel shoves him a little.

“Not doing good?” Laurel repeats. “No, she’s definitely not doing good. She has seizures and her kidneys are failing, which means that her entire system is shutting down and if her systems shuts down, she dies, Oliver. Sara is dying”.

Oliver rubs at his eyes.

“I’ve never meant-”.

“What?” Laurel yells. “To fuck my sister behind my back? How long?”.

“Laurel, please. I don’t wan to hurt you any further”.

“I’m already hurt” Laurel replies. “I’m bleeding from everywhere. Just tell me. How long?”.

“Just a few weeks” Oliver replies. “It wasn’t anything serious, it wasn’t”.

Laurel bites her lip, shaking her head.

“She had a crush on you” Laurel whispers. “You knew”.

Only doesn’t reply.

“How many girls have you slept with while we were together?”.

Oliver frowns, and immediately shakes his head. He looks hurt by her question and Laurel does want him to hurt. She wants Oliver to hurt at least the half of what she’s hurting.

“What? No, no one, Laurel. I swear. Before Sara, I’ve never-. There was no one else. Ever” Oliver says. Gently, slowly, he brushes his fingers against hers, tries to hold her hand. Laurel shakes him away and he doesn’t try again because fuck him, Oliver might have been an asshole who fucked her sister but he’s always been the most gentle and kind man Laurel has find herself sharing life with.

The touch feels alien, right now, and not only because she despises him, but also because she hasn’t been touched in months. Addicts in rehab are forbidden to have romantic relationshipswith each other and the last people to touch Laurel have been her social workers, restraining her when she was having breakdowns after breakdowns in the first few months of rehab.

Laurel blinks, trying to get the memories to go away.

“Please, believe me” he begs.

“You can’t possibly ask me to believe you” Laurel sighs.

She looks at Oliver. She knows him better than she knows herself. And he knows her. And yet, right now, standing one in front of the other, they’re strangers. There’s a distance in between them that Laurel knows won’t ever be fully restored. They will always be broken.

“Sara is nineteen, Oliver. She can barely keep up with College and she bartends in the weekends. You just said you don’t love her and there’s nothing she can offer you, so why?” Laurel asks, defeated. “Why did you do it?”.

He doesn’t answer, and that’s all the information Laurel needs.

“Laurel” Oliver moans and she looks into his eyes and they’re swelling with tears but it’s not enough. It can’t be. “What I did, to both you and Sara, is unforgivable. I’m so, so sorry”.

Laurel swallows.

“Stop sending stuff”.

Oliver nods. “Okay”.

The flowers stop coming.

On Friday Sara codes. Her heart stops beating and they shock her back to life.

Laurel goes and buys a bottle of whiskey, her favorite. She closes herself in the bathroom, in this empty house that watched her grow up, and holds the bottle to her chest like it’s her baby and she never wants to be parted from it. They can’t live without each other. Laurel wants to drown, in sorrow, in water, it doesn’t matter. She just wants to go. She’s lived way too long and she found out that it’s just not for her.

Living is not for everyone.

It certainly isn’t for the Lance family. She spends the night in the bathtub with the bottle and she has to dig her nails into her own flesh to stop herself from uncorking the bottle. It’s too tempting, and yet Laurel resists, spends the night sleepless, crying, listening to the sounds of despair that cling to the walls of this house.

Sara needs a transplant. They all get tested and none of them is a match. You spend your entire life looking after your little sister and when she needs you the most, you can’t even give a kidney to save her life. The doctors put Sara on the list, and she’s the one on top and Laurel never imagined in her entire life that she would be sitting here, hoping for someone to die so that Sara can live.

One evening over dinner, Quentin quietly comes out with, We could ask Oliver’s mother for some help.

Laurel nearly slices half of her hand with the knife.

“No” she replies, trying to keep her voice down.

Quentin sighs. “Look, the Queens know all the important people in the city. They might know some doctor, someone who can speed up the process, we need-”.

“We don’t need the Queens’ charity, dad”.

“Stop being so stubborn, Laurel” he replies, angrily. “This is not about you. Your sister is dying. We have to try everything we can”.

“My sister fucked my boyfriend!” Laurel yells, smashing her fist on the table. Dinah whimpers in her corner where she always is because she’s lovely, and Laurel adores her, but she’s useless, withering away in her own cocoon of books and dust.

Laurel gets up on her feet and stares down at her father.

“I don’t want Oliver Queen or his fucking stuck-up mother to be in our lives ever again. Not in mine, not in Sara’s”.

Her father doesn’t reply. Laurel stomps away to her room. She has really no power, here. She can’t decide for Sara. Only her parents can and that’s the law and Laurel knows the law very well, probably too well. Laurel paints her nails black and washes her face; she looks in the mirror and she hates her own face, invisibly scarred by alcohol and addiction and betrayal. She drives to the rehab center and smokes some more pot with Felicity on the roof, just to get her nerves to finally relax, just to let some of the tension go. She spends the night in the bed that saw her sweat away her addiction and her demons, a silent witness to a life of mistakes. Laurel never falls asleep. In the comfort of darkness where she belongs, time goes by as she tries to learn as much as she can about drowning and what she comes up with is that no one really survives. Sara was in the water for God knows how long, dragged away by the flood, washed up on the shore, lungs filled with water and foam and scratchy sand. Damaged.

Laurel throws her phone away. It lands on the floor and the noise almost wakes Felicity up. Luckily, the hacker is a very good sleeper. All the crystals Felicity lived on for years fried half of her brain and gave her just the right kick to make her into a genius at the same time. Felicity has clear plans for what her future is gonna be, once she’s out of here, once she’s better. She says she wants to work for some big tech company, maybe National Security or something. She says she wants to make good of the skills she has. Laurel is alone in the world. She has no plans, no dreams. When she thinks of her future, all she sees is darkness and loneliness - empty bottle, pills rattling and torment.

In the morning she goes to her AA meeting and she’s lost. She sits in the back, doesn’t say one single word for the entire time. She locks herself in her head so that no one can find her. They ask to talk about their feelings but Laurel is numb, she has no feelings.

She’s just existing.

“I miss him” she tells Felicity as they walk to the bus stop. They sit down on the asphalt under the pale shade of a tree. “I hate him and I miss him so bad”.

Felicity pushes her glasses back up on her nose.

“Do you still love him?”.

Laurel bites her lip and says, “I fear I will never stop”.

And that is her greatest nightmare, and the nightmare that plagues every woman that God has cursed on this earth - being chained to a man whom she loves, but who has the power to destroy her.

Verdant is - was - Tommy’s and Thea’s club, their little jewel. A fucking clocktower. Before the cheating and the water and the misery, Sara used to bartend here on the weekends - swinging her hips behind the counter as she mixed drinks and made sweet eyes to whatever breathing human being was sitting in front of her. Sara liked to party and have good sex and she didn’t care much for grades. She liked to be free and now she’s constricted in an hospital bed that will most likely turn into her deathbed. It makes Laurel laugh, how people thought that Sara was the really badly messed up one only because she actually enjoyed her life, when Laurel is the one who’s been falling apart for all of her life; everyone was always talking about Sara swapping spit with both boys and girls alike, but no one ever noticed Laurel showing up for class while stupidly high or drunk.

The surface is all that matters. The plain sight is always enough - no one ever bothers to search a little more deeply.

Laurel has lost count of how many times she got drunk right here at Verdant. Never when Sara was working, though. She didn’t want her little sister to see. Tommy or Thea would always cut her off at some point, and Oliver would take her back and her’s or his place, hold her head and rub her back as she threw up and tuck her into bed. He would stay until she fell asleep.

She hates this place, now, and she wishes it had died down along with its owners. Technically, the club is temporarily closed. In the wake of death and mourning, Oliver and his mother have been trying to sort Robert’s stuff and Thea’s belonging. Thea is only one year older than Sara and all of her life fits inside of exactly four boxes. All of her clothes haven been given to charities and now Oliver, along with Tommy’s father Malcolm, is trying to decide what to do with the club. 

It’s either luck or destiny that she finds Oliver there. She doesn’t know why she’s even here in the first place. He’s behind the counter, where Sara used to be, submerged by paperwork, looking totally miserable. He’s got a beard worth of weeks and he looks like he hasn’t slept in ages, just like Laurel. He looks up at her; he’s more than surprised to see her and he doesn’t hide it. Their eyes meet and Laurel hates him because she’s still weak for him and for his stupid eyes.

“Hi” he says.

“Pour me a drink” Laurel replies.

Oliver swallows. He stays still for a few seconds. “Uhm, there’s really not-. I mean… I need to restock”.

“Water’s just fine” Laurel quickly replies.

“Okay” Oliver nods.

He leaves the paperwork and grabs a glass from the rack. When it’s full, he places it in from of her. She drank Mojitos and Long Islands from these type of glasses, right in this stop, so many times before, and now she’s drinking water. Oliver is quiet. He doesn’t talk. He just stands there, staring at her. He’s always done that. Even before they started dating, she could always feel his eyes on her. He would watch her for hours with those big blue eyes, and smile at her in the distance. Henever came close, he always let her set the pace. Laurel was the one to initiate their first kiss and the one to slip a hand down his underwear a few years later. The leash that kept them together, just as the cord that binds Laurel to her sister, had always been too tight and eventually it got severed in the most horrible way.

“What are you gonna do with the place?” Laurel asks, running her finger around the glass’ rim.

“I will keep it going. Hire more staff” he replies. “Thea and Tommy would have wanted that”.

Laurel nods because God help him, he’s right. The glass is empty, now. Oliver gets her a refill. Laurel runs a hand through her hair and swallows. Oliver looks even more awkward than her. He’s playing with a pen and swinging stiffly from one foot to the other. Laurel wants to slap him and hold him at the same time. He’s a liar and a cheater but Laurel might be even worse than him: what kind of woman goes and tells her sorrows and secrets to the man who cheated on her?

“Sara needs a transplant” Laurel confesses. “She needs kidneys. Every night, before I go to sleep, I pray for someone to die”.

Oliver swallows. He opens and closes his mouth a few times.

“I-I can ask some my father’s friends if-”.

“No” Laurel interrupts him. “I don’t want your help”.

“Okay” Oliver nods.

Laurel licks her lips. She stares at him. “I hate you”.

“I know” he says, nodding and staring down at the floor. “What happened to Sara is my fault and I won’t ever forgive myself for what I’ve done to you. Ever”.

Laurel knows her means those words, that he really is sorry. She knows Oliver better than anyone else in this world and yet it is hard now to believe that - because when she was at her most vulnerable, he did lie to her and he kept lying and lying. She wonders what would have happened if the Gambit never went down. Would Oliver and Sara still be seeing each other behind her back? Would Laurel eventually notice?

“Sara came with you on that boat” Laurel replies, “She’s just as much to blame”.

Oliver says nothing and Laurel appreciates that. Silence is bliss to her right now. Oliver carefully circles the counter and he sits down on the stool next to her. He keeps his distance so that if Laurel wants to run, if she wants out, then she just has to stand up and leave. He looks so tired, and he definitely got a little thinner since the last time Laurel saw him before this whole mess. She wants to touch him, run her fingers through his hair and her hands down his chest. She wants to feel his skin under hers and she wants to bite and scratch and hurt him, sink her teeth right into his neck and make him bleed, because he deserves it.

“How are you?” She asks him.

Oliver shrugs. “I’m alright, I guess. The house feels so silent and empty without Thea, and Tommy…”.

He can’t finish the sentence. A sob wrecks him. Oliver rubs at his eyes with his fingers and shakes his head, willing the bad thoughts to go away.

“Yeah” Laurel nods.

“Yeah”.

“Did you watch Sara drown?” Laurel asks, and she knows it hurts but she needs to know.

Oliver swallows. “When the water started getting in, Sara… she was dragged away by the flood. I made it to the bridge but dad and Thea-. Thea was floating and dad -he, uh, he hit his head during the explosion, I think”.

He takes a deep breath. His hands are shaking a little and he’s crying.

“Tommy was stuck in some debris and we were sinking fast” he gone on. “He told me to go. I didn’t want to leave him, I didn’t, I tried to get him out but I think his legs were broken and-. I jumped into the water with one of the fucking lifeboats and I tried to look for Sara but it was so dark, Laurel. Eventually I passed out”.

He cries. Laurel presses her lips together, trying not to do the same. Oliver covers his face with his hands and he looks so desperate and sad, and Laurel can’t stop herself. She gets up on her feet and reaches for him, taking his face in her hands. Their eyes meet like so many times before and their souls recognise each other. The trust that used to connect them has been severed, and yet something remains, something that pulls them together. Laurel touches his rough, stubbly cheeks, digs her nails into his flesh and then presses her thumbs to his lips. His mouth - so soft, red and inviting. His scent - so familiar. They haven’t been this close in a very long time and Laurel knows it’s wrong, that there’s too much shit going on in between them right now, but she’s just as helpless as he is.

Laurel is just as bad.

“I’m so sorry about what I did, Laurel” Oliver says. “I know that you won’t ever forget and I don’t know if you will ever forgive me but if you do… You're so important to me. These words might not mean anything to you but they do to me. I will keep trying to make it up to you for the rest of my life”.

She kisses him because she wants to and because she’s missed this, the feeling of him against her body. She doesn't care about his words, not right now. Oliver kisses her back after just a few seconds of confusion. He doesn’t dare touch her. His hands ghost over her hips but never actually graze her body. Laurel fists his hair in her hands, scratches at the back of his neck. She parts his lips with her tongue, licks whatever corner she can find and bites his bottom lip just a little too hard, just enough to make him moan - in pain, in pleasure, she doesn’t care because it’s music to her ears. She’s been starving for this, being in between Oliver’s legs, their chests rubbing together. Oliver is so warm against her body, the shape of him familiar to her hands and to her tongue. She never wants to stop kissing him, and she wants more, so much more. Laurel wants to destroy him and destroy herself in the process, to convoy all of her hate and her urges in kissing him, turn him on, maybe make him come.

She can’t.

Laurel wraps a hand around his neck and pushes him away. His lips are red, wet and shiny and a small string of saliva hangs in between their mouths. Laurel wipes it away with the back of her hands.

Laurel draws away from him.

“Laurel” Oliver whispers.

She grabs her purse from the floor and shakes her head. She doesn't give him anything, not a goodbye, not a word of comfort.

Sara keeps getting worse and apparently there’s a scarcity of deaths in Starling City at the moment. No kidneys for Sara. On Friday the doctors tell them that Sara is choking on the same tube that’s keeping her alive. Her throat muscles are too atrophied and she needs a smaller tube.

“She will be without oxygen for a few moments” the doctor say.

They’re sitting in this conference room, talking about Sara’s life as if they’re talking about a business transaction. There’s even bowls of candies in the center of the table and it feels like they’re all playing a part. Her mother is silently weeping and her father is trying so hard to be strong.

Laurel can’t stop thinking about Oliver’s lips. She wonders if Oliver tasted her when he kissed Sara, if that’s the reason why he chose exactly her own sister to cheat on her with.

“Laurel, what do you think?” Quentin asks.

Laurel turns to look at him, distracted. It takes a few seconds before his face fully comes into focus. She swallows, coughing.

“I think” she starts, “I think we should let Sara go”.

Her mother looks at her like she’s just professed her faith in Satan.

“What?” Dinah says.

“Y-You want to take her off life support?” Quentin asks.

Laurel bites her lip and then slowly nods. She touches a finger to her eye. She’s crying. Laurel wipes her tears away and straightens her back on the chair, tries to get a hold of herself.

“That’s not our Sara” she says. “She’s gone, daddy. Sara drowned. She never came home. She’s probably in so much pain right now, and whatever we do it’s only going to make it worse”.

Quentin is at a loss of words, like reality hit him like a hurricane all at once. Laurel can see the pain in his eyes as he slowly realise that maybe she’s right, that what they’re struggling so bad to heal is just a ghost, the shell of a soul that never left the shore she drowned at.

And then surprisingly, perhaps for the first time, Dinah takes things into her own hands. Laurel’s only rarely seen her so determined. She only gets like this when it’s about her job. When Laurel announced she was an addict and an alcoholic, her mother simply made teary eyes and hugged her close to her chest and told her that she was strong and that she believed in her. During her first few months in rehab, Sara and Quentin came to visit her every weekend. Dinah only came here and there, when work let her. Laurel knows that it was hard for her mother to see her rainbow baby in such disastrous mess, and yet it still hurt - Laurel wanted mommy, but mommy stayed away.

At some point, her mother decided to stop fighting for her first daughter but Laurel is fine with her mother fighting for Sara. That’s what good mothers do, and what good sisters have no problems dealing with.

“Go on with the procedure” she says, grabbing her husband’s hand. “Then, we’ll see. We’ll make a decision”.

They wait in the cafeteria as the doctors do their thing, trying to make Sara live another day. In between Laurel’s fourth and fifth coffee of the day, Quentin gets called from the office for some kind of emergency - punk kid burns down his own weed shop, and Laurel and her mother are left alone with each other and with their silences. Back in Sara’s room, everything is still the same. There’s a smaller tube in Sara’s mouth but she’s still there, still and cold and frozen in her bed and no even the sun rays peering through the window are enough to make the situation better.

Laurel decides it’s time to paint Sara’s nails. She chooses navy blue. She does Sara’s left hand as her mother does Sara’s right.

“I know what you’re thinking” Laurel says, gently passing the small brush over Sara’s fingernails. Her mother looks over at her from the other side of the bed and she looks genuinely confused.

“You think I want to let Sara die”.

Dinah shakes her head. “I would never think that, Laurel. I know how much you love her”.

Laurel licks her lips. “I want Sara not to be in pain” she says, “If she survives it’s going to be so hard for her. And for us. We don’t know the extension of her injuries, if she will be able to talk or walk or _be_ herself ever again. I don’t want that kind of life for her”.

Her mother nods. “If she survives and she’s different, will you love her any less?”.

“Of course not”.

Dinah smiles at her, putting away the small bottle of nail polish.

“I think Sara wants to fight, Laurel” her mother says. “She learned that from you. When you went to rehab, she was very sad and she felt lonely for a while, but she was very proud of you. She _is_ very proud of you. She said she wanted to be strong like you”.

Laurel blinks. Her hands are shaking and she’s crying. She looks at Sara, so beautiful and so desperate, fighting the cage that her body’s turned into. Laurel lets her mother hug her, relishes in the hold she was once so used to, so happy to be in. She hasn’t felt this close to her mother in a long time and it is sad that wha slowly bring them back together has to be Sara’s suffering.

It’s late in the evening when Laurel’s finally alone with her sister. She’s decided to stay the night. She eats Doritos for dinner. Her coke gets stuck into the vending machine and she nearly sprains her shoulder trying to get the can to fall. Then, she brushes Sara’s hair a little, being mindful of the bandages on the side of her head. Eventually, she settles down on her usual chair. She runs her fingers down Sara’s cheek and then slowly, rest her head on the hard pillow. Laurel brings her mouth closer to Sara’s ear, so that if Sara can hear her, she will hear her even better.

“Sara” she pleads. “You’re so strong. If you want to fight, that’s okay, but if you have no more fight left in you, that’s okay, too. You can let go, if you want. Just let me know, okay? Let me know, and I’ll help you. I’d do anything for you, Sara”.

Laurel holds Sara’s hand to her heart.

“Whatever you chose, just know that I forgive you” she whispers. “I forgive you, Sara, and I love you so much”.

Two days later, Laurel hits what she thinks it’s rock bottom for her - or perhaps one of the many rock bottoms in her life. Unbearable pain calls for unthinkable actions and that’s how Laurel Lance ends up in a bar brawl and almost gets arrested. She should really stop going to bars, really, but the temptation is just too sweet. She chooses another bar, this time. Maybe she’ll find another young barman who won’t ask any questions to quench the bitterness in her heart with, at least for a little while.

She finds a freaking snob businessman, instead.

She’s there at the counter, distractedly sipping her soda with ice as she watches the News on the tv, minding her own businesses, when this guy literally materialises at her side. She ignores him. He’s wearing tailored pants and a white button down shirt and his shoes probably cost that Laurel’s father yearly pay check. He has a stupid smug on his face, the one that says, All women love me, I put my dick in every hole I see, you stuck-up frigid bitch, and Laurel immediately hates him. He’s not alone, of course. He has a nice clique of trusty ass-kissers and yes-men. After all, idiots never go around without their pack to support them.

He calls her sweetheart and honey and babe and offers her a drink. Laurel politely refuses. She even gives him a small smile. He doesn’t appreciates the effort. And he goes on, telling her she shouldn’t be ungrateful when a nice man offers her a good time, and he whispers in her ear how good he is with his hands and with his cock and he very unceremoniously gropes her ass with one hand and Laurel just sees red.

She turns and punches him right in the face. Her knuckles collide with his cheekbone and Laurel is very tempted to scream in pain because her hand is burning, but she won’t ever give him that satisfaction. He stumbles back and she hits him again, this time square on the nose. He starts bleeding and Laurel’s never seen a better sight. After that is chaos. Laurel feels hands pulling at her and dragging her and she gets hit a few times, doesn’t even know from what direction. Someone cuts her with the broken neck of a beer bottle and someone else shouts that they’re calling the police and as soon as she hears that, Laurel knows she has to run. She shoves elbows here and there and pushes people out of the way and once she’s outside, she just starts running ‘till she thinks she’s safe. There’s blood on her face and her left eye hurts terribly. Her knuckles and hands are all bloody and scrapped.

Laurel cries.

She’s alone in the middle of the night and she can’t go back home. She calls for a cab and tells the driver the address of the first place that comes to her mind, the wrongest place of all - the Queens’ manor.

It’s Oliver who answers the door, which is good, because Laurel doesn’t think she could face a confrontation with Oliver’s mother right now. He’s sporting a horrible case of bedhead because it’s 3:30 in the morning and he was clearly sleeping or at least trying to, judging by the dark circles under his eyes.

“Oh my God” he says, and he looks so scared. “Laurel, what happened?”.

She sobs, almost collapsing on her knees on her ex-boyfriend’s threshold.

“I was in a fight” she replies. Her nose is leaking and she runs a hand under it to check that she’s not bleeding. The last thing she wants to to do is to have a nosebleed on Oliver’s porch.

“I didn’t know where else to go” she admits, crying. “And I’m in pain and I just want to drink and I can’t go home like this, I can’t, I should call my therapist but it’s late and-”.

“Come here, come inside” Oliver replays, stepping to the left and gesturing with one hand.

Laurel wraps her arms around herself, trails behind Oliver. She knows these walls and these rooms by memory. She’s seen every inch of this house. She spent countless nights in Oliver’s bedroom and countless mornings beings teased by Thea in front of Robert and Moira. They’ve had sex in Oliver’s room and on the couch in the living-room and in his father’s study. She’s studied for her exams on the kitchen’s elegant and polished table and proof-read Thea’s essays in the girl’s room, which is now locked. She’s drunk hot cocoa and cuddled up in a comfy blanket with Ollie in front of the fireplace and read books in that armchair right next to the flat screen TV. She’s spent a life in this fucking manor and now it all looks just like a bad memory, like a haunted ghost house.

Oliver tells her she can get cleaned up in his bathroom. He knows she will refuse his help if he asks. Laurel looks at herself in the mirror. She’s got a pretty nice shiner on her left eye and a busted eyebrow. She’s bleeding from a cut under her chin and her whole face just hurts. She hisses as she splashes water on her face and cleans all the cuts and wounds. Her body hurts when she squats on the toilet, one little pain after the other like she’s being stung by needles. She can’t feel half of her face anymore and her right hand feels completely numb. She might even have some broken bone - she might, but right now it doesn’t even seem too important.

Oliver hands her a glass of water when she comes out of the bathroom. Laurels drains it in just a few seconds.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in here. Your mom-”.

“She’s sleeping like a rock” he replies. “She takes a few sleeping pills for, you know… She won’t hear a thing”.

“Still”.

“You’re always welcome here” Oliver says, gently, taking the glass from her hand and placing it on his nightstand. There, right next to the alarm clock, there’s a framed picture of the both of them and Tommy. Graduation day. If Laurel remembers correctly, her father took it. They look so young and happy. By that time, Laurel was already drinking way too much and too often for a simple high school graduate, but it was only in the weekends and at parties and no one really thought much about it. Her parents didn’t know. The pills and the antidepressant only came with College, when she was too stressed or the pressure was just too much to bear on a sober mind.

Laurel swallow, looking away. Oliver is in sweats and a black t-shirt and he’s looking at her so patiently, so sweetly.

“What happened?” he asks.

“This guy touched me” Laurel shrugs. “I hit him”.

Oliver nods and he looks even a little proud. “I can drive you home, if you want, or back to the rehab center”.

“No, I…” Laurel starts, but soon interrupts herself because she realises she has no idea what she wants to do or say, or where she wants to go.

What she knows, is that she’s hungry - hungry for peace and happiness and love. If she can’t have a drink or numb herself with a few pills, then she’s gonna have to do with second best and Oliver is here and he’s looking at her just right - just how he used to look at her before kissing her. His blue eyes look right into her darker ones and Laurel wants him, she never stopped.

She gives in because she’s human and because she’s weak - they all are.

She kisses him, standing up on her tiptoes. Oliver kisses her back, gently, but Laurel has no use for gentleness anymore. She gets one hand in his hair and rubs the other one down his chest, scratches at one nipple with her fingernail. Oliver moans in her mouth and their tongues meet in the middle and fight for dominance and Laurel wins. She always wins - and the same time she always loses. He wraps his arms around her waist and tilts his head right a little, giving Laurel better access to his mouth. He pulls her closer, pressing their bodies together. Laurel feels him, hard and hot against her body, pulsing through his sweats and underwear. Their mouths part, struggling for air, and Oliver’s lips slowly descend down her neck, sucking and lapping at her skin. His hands roam her back, freely, gently courting the notches of her spine. Laurel bites her lip, showing more of her neck to Oliver’s mouth. Her hands slowly reach for the hem of his t-shirt. She sneaks her fingers past it and softly brushes her fingers against Oliver’s familiar skin, through the downy blond hairs that cover his abs and then lower, past the waistband of his sweatpants and underwear.

He moans when she takes him in her hand, forehead against her shoulder. He’s warm and hard and he’s already leaking pre-come everywhere like a fucking fifteen years old. Laurel swipes her thumb over the head and Oliver instinctively thrusts into her fist, swinging his hips just right, looking for friction, chasing release.

“Laurel, wait” he pants, closing his hand around her wrist.

“What?” Laurel asks, releasing him.

“I-I don’t think we should do this” he says.

Laurel stares at him and she honest to God starts laughing.

“You shouldn’t have fucked my sister either but you did” she replies, kissing him again and shoving her tongue in his mouth. She tries to get her hand between his legs again but he denies her again.

“Please” he says.

Laurel presses her teeth together so hard it makes a weird noise.

“What? What’s your fucking problem?” She spits out. “You could never keep it in your pants and now you go all puritan on me?”.

“Laurel, that’s not why-” he tries.

Laurel shoves him a little. “Is it me?” She asks. “I don’t make your dick hard anymore? Is that why you fucked my sister, uh? Did I become too boring and you just needed some fresh new holes to put your dick in?”.

“Laurel, stop” he begs her, running a hand through his hair.

He looks desperate and hurting and Laurel wants to hurt him even more. She shoves him a little.

“Or is it because she’s younger, mh? What, did it make you hard wondering whether she was tighter because she fucks girls? Is that it? You chose her because she likes girls, because you wanted to know what it feels like to fuck someone who puts their mouth on other girls?”.

He shakes his head, “No, that’s not-”.

“Then fucking why, Oliver?”.

“Because you love drugs and booze more than me!” he yells back at her.

Laurel blinks, speechless. They stare at each other, two panting animals stuck in the ring, fighting each other to the death. He’s just as furious as her. Frowning, jaw clenched so tight it must hurt.

“What?” Laurel whispers.

“All the fucking times you left me to go get high with your junkie friends and all the fucking times I bailed you out before your father could find out that you’d been going around drunk - _again,_ and all the times I covered for you and I had to see you drink yourself stupid or being so drugged up you couldn’t even tell you ass from your head - it broke me” Oliver says, angrily. “You never stopped once to think about what you addiction was doing to me. You just kept pushing me away, never let me help you and I so wanted to help you, Laurel. You never let me in. And then one day you come here and say you’re going to rehab and you leave. You left, and you left me, and Thea and Tommy and Sara and your family and you never once thought about how we were doing - about how I was doing”.

Oliver clenches his fists to his sides, his knuckles turning white. He’s staring at the floor. Laurel cover her face with her hands and swallows, trying to make sense of the words he’s just vomited all over her.

“I was literally trying not to end up dead” Laurel whispers. “Don’t you dare blame this on me”.

“I don’t” Oliver immediately says, “but I was alone and so was Sara. You didn’t see her, Laurel. She was so lonely and sad. She wasn’t smiling any more and she’d isolated herself from all of her friends. We were both missing you so bad and I just…. I tried to be a good friend to her, to make her happy”.

“By fucking her?” Laurel bites back, running a hand trough her hair.

She furiously paces back and forth in the room, cursing everything and everyone, but mostly herself - because it did all start because of her. If she’d never picked up and addiction, if she’d just been normal, Sara would still be healthy, Thea and Tommy would still be alive. Oliver might have cheated on her all the same, but the inconvenient doubt that it might not have happened if she’d never had gone into rehab is still there, eating at her brain like a cancer.

“I made a mistake” Oliver goes on, “and I let her get too close to me. I knew she had acrush on me and I took advantage of her and I can’t tell you how ashamed I am of myself for that. The moment she stepped foot onto the Gambit I knew I had fucked up and I won’t ever forgive myself for it”.

Laurel swallows. “You fucked my sister because you were feeling lonely”.

“Yes” Oliver whispers, “and no. There’s no good reason, Laurel, except that I am an asshole and a pathetic waste of a man. I’m sorry”.

“Shut up” she says, raising one hand to stop him from speaking further. The grave he’s dug is already big enough for the both of them and all of their mistakes.

Her head hurts too much to think rationally and plus, they’ve left all reason behind them quite a very long time ago. There’s nothing to explain, nothing to say because things have been said and done and they can’t be changed. Things are what things are and the sooner they move on from them, the better. Laurel wraps her arms around Oliver’s neck and gives him a quick peck on the lips. Then, she moves her mouth to his ear.

“I need this, okay?”.

“Okay” he replies.

“Yeah?”.

Oliver nods, gently running his fingers trough her hair.

“Take off your clothes” Laurel whispers, tugging at his sweatpants and pulling the waistband down of a few inch, just enough to show the pale, taut skin of his hips and lower abdomen.

This time he complies. Oliver takes off his t-shirt and Laurel splays her palms on his chest, over the tattoo on his right pec and brings her mouth to his nipple, sucking and licking at the small, hard nub. He moans under her, and it sends a thrill down her spine, something she hasn’t felt in so long. She quickly undoes her jeans as Oliver pushes his sweatpants and boxers down his legs, kicking it away with his foot. Laurel takes him in, stares at his body as he moves to rest with his back against the bed’s headboard, waiting for her. She takes off her sweater and bra and joins him. She straddles him and hooks one finger into her panties, dragging it down her legs. Oliver helps her as best as he can, trying to make her the most comfortable. He kisses her neck and touches the small of her back. This is her favorite position. She’s always loved to ride him and be able to look at him in the eyes at the same time, to be able to be so completely wrapped up in one another. Laurel sighs, kissing him. He’s warm in between her legs, the head of his cock gently brushing against her clit, so sensitive and so wet. Jesus - she’s so fucking wet, dripping everywhere like she’s seventeen again. Laurel wraps a hand around the back of his neck and pushes his head to her chest. Oliver starts sucking on one of her nipples as their hips move together following the same rhythm they know so well. As his mouth works on her chest, his fingers sneak in between their bodies and one of his fingers gently pushes inside of her. Laurel bites her lip, swinging her hips and pressing herself down on his hand. It’s a tight space, and his wrist must be hurting, but Oliver’s always been a very attentive lover.

“Do you want me to eat you out?” he whispers in her ear.

Laurel shakes her head. “No. No, just -. Get a condom” she pants right into his mouth, before bending down her head. She nips at the soft juncture in between his neck and shoulder and revels in the sensation of Oliver moaning for her.

She doesn’t need to see it to know that he’s opening the third drawer of his night stand because she knows that’s where he’s been keeping condoms since they were seventeen and fooling around in this house, fucking anywhere they could find a cozy and warm corner to hide into. His hands are shaking as he tears the envelope open and fuck - they’re both shaking because this is the wrongest thing they could possibly be doing in a moment like this, where everything is still unknown and literally hanging by a thread. The tip of his cock is already wet from rubbing against her foldsand from his own arousal and Laurel wraps her fingers around him, pumping her fist a few times. Oliver groans and hisses and bumps his nose against her chin. She helps him unroll the condom and he just slips into her cunt so smoothly, like it’s velvet. Laurel starts swinging her hips, fucking him slowly, at first, pulling his hair a little and licking into his mouth. Oliver grabs her thighs and lets his head fall back against the wall, eyes closed, panting.

Laurel wraps a hand around his neck, thumb slightly pressing against his windpipe, and brings her head down to his chest. She bites his nipple, leaving teeth imprints on his skin.

“Do you like it? Do I feel good?” she whispers in his ear, because it’s always been like this between them, playing games, testing each other to see which one will out-dominate the other this time.

Oliver doesn’t answer. He’s too far gone. He thrusts into her, palming her thighs and running his hands all over her body, up and down her back. They kiss, swapping spit and clawing at each other like animals in heat. Laurel stares at him, running a hand trough his hair. He looks back at her with such adoring eyes as he thrusts into her just right, and Laurel wonders - she wonders if he did this with Sara, too, if he took her right on this bed. She wonders if he fucked her with a condom or went bareback (she knows Sara likes it that way some times).

Laurel growls, grabbing his jaw and shoving his face away.

“I can’t look at you” she says, pulling away from him.

Oliver’s dick slips out of her and he gently tries to grab her wrist but Laurel slaps his hand away. She turn her back to him, crouching down on her knees.

“Take me from behind” she tells him.

Oliver’s arms immediately wraps around her waist. He pulls her to him, their thighs touching, her back to his chest. He guides his cock right back into her and it goes without saying that she wants it harder. He complies and it feels good. Oliver rests his head on her shoulder, mouths at her skin and licks at the baby hairs on the back of her neck like a starving man, desperate for love and approval. He is soft where Laurel is hard as stone. His hands are gentle whilst Laurel’s hands grab at his hair and pull, her nails dig into his skin, leaving half moon imprints, scratching and clawing like a hurt animal. His hand rests on her abdomen and when he realises that she’s touching herself, his hand slides lower, takes over hers. Oliver presses two fingers on her clit and Laurel bites her lip. She grabs his wrist, but he doesn’t need guidance. He knows exactly what to do. He makes her come first, an act of chivalry from a man who’s got nothing of chivalrous, and Laurel turns her head to press her forehead against his cheek, suffocating her scream against his skin. She comes and it leaks everywhere, all over his hands, down her thighs. Oliver follows right after, thrusting into her, deep and hard.

“Laurel” he moans against the soft skin of her neck.

She’s sensitive, almost a little too much - it circles around the edges of pain, the gentle muscles soreness that’s she’s somehow kind of missed. Laurel places a hand on his thigh, shoving him away and Oliver immediately gets the message. He’s soft, now, and he carefully slips out of her. He falls on his beck and disposes of the condom. Laurel wraps the sheets around herself and settles on her side. Oliver doesn’t even try to touch her. There’s distance in between them, and not only in this bed, and that distance has to stay. 

In the confusion and the haze of the post coital bliss and the smokes of withdrawal creeping right under her skin, Laurel asks, “Were you good to her? Sara - were you good to her?”.

Oliver swallows.

“Did you force her?”.

Oliver immediately shakes his head. “No, no. Laurel, she wanted it. I never made her uncomfortable”.

Laurel bites her lip. She places her hand on Oliver’s cheek and traces his lips with her thumb. She hates him. Laurel hurts all over when she sits up on the bed. She blinks and even that simple action causes her to wince in pain. She bends down to pick up her clothes and leaves the sheet behind on the bed.

“I have to go” she says, standing up one her feet.

“Wait” Oliver says. “You should stay. It’s very late. I can take Thea’s room and you can stay here”.

“As if I’d let you sleep in your dead sister’s bedroom. I’ll call a cab” Laurel replies. She collects her stuff and her purse. She tells Oliver not to walk her to the door, that she knows exactly where to go. She doesn’t want anyone to be with her. She wants to be alone, because if she’s alone, then no one else but herself can hurt her.

She leaves Oliver in his own bed and she walks the Walk of Shame in total darkness and solitude and she waits for her cab to come, sitting on the cold sidewalk right outside the Queens’ manor. She cries and her make up runs all over her cheeks. She cries silent tears because her pain is always been silent. Laurel’s pain never made her scream, not like Sara’s. She’s always kept everything inside and she has no place to channel all of her sorrows; and so she will keep silent, locking everything she feels inside because she doesn’t want the world to know.

Some days, she doesn’t want to live at all.

It’s a Friday when they find kidneys for Sara. Laurel’s away for rehab.

In the morning she speaks with her therapist after the next AA meeting and she tells him everything. She vomits words after words for what feels like hours as she bites her nails and makes herself bleed because she can’t stop thinking about Sara, about how she’s doing, if she’s in pain or not.

She wonders whether Sara is ready to let go.

She’s been a little bit off the grid, talking to her parents only through text messages and sneaking into the hospital to be with Sara only when they’re gone. She doesn’t want them to see the regret in her eyes, because they would ask about it and she can’t tell the truth - that she slept with the asshole who cheated on her and that she might actually do it again because she can’t stop thinking about fucking him. Thinking about Oliver and Oliver on that boat with Sara make Laurel wants to drink. It makes her edgy, nervous, and highly intolerable and hateful and that’s why she’s keeping her distances from her family, because they don’t need all the negative vibes, all of her shit - they already have too much to deal with.

Now that she can’t drink or inject pills, Laurel some times smokes when she’s nervous. She’s rolling a cigarette when her father calls her and tells her the news. He’s ecstatic about it and Laurel is, too. She wipes at the tears in her eyes and tells him she will be there soon. She crouches down and smokes her cigarette, wraps her arms around herself, trying to disappear, to hide herself from anyone else. Laurel can’t stop crying and the reasons for it go from Sara to the regret of having slept with Oliver to all of the mistakes she’s made in her life. Twenty five years of mistakes.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Felicity says, gently touching her shoulder.

Laurel wipes her eyes and tries her best to smile.

“They found kidneys for Sara”.

“Laurel, that’s amazing!” Felicity says, pulling Laurel in the biggest hug. “Is she going to be alright?”.

Laurel shrugs. “I don’t know” she answers. “She’s going to be a little better, though”.

Felicity nods, running a hand through Laurel’s hair. “Why are you so sad, then?”.

Laurel bites her lip. “I’m not, I’m… scared, I guess. I spent so much time wishing for Sara to live and now that she will, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to us, to our family” she explains.“My family - we don’t do well with change”.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay” Felicity says. “I know it might sound stupid but you’re strong, and your sister is definitely a tough one. She’s not going down without a fight. You’re both going to make it. I know you, Laur. You’re good. You’re clean, now, and I know you’re going to take care of you sister the best you can”.

Laurel shakes her head. “I’m not good. I’m selfish, and I make the most stupid decisions”.

“Shut up”.

Laurel sighs and confesses, “I slept with Oliver”.

“Ouch” Felicity says, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Yeah” Laurel nods.

“So… do you want to get back with him?”.

Laurel shrugs, “I don’t know what I want. I wish I did” she admits. She takes a look at the time and smiles at her friend. “I have to go, now” she says.

Felicity nods, dragging Laurel into the tightest hug. Laurel walks to her car. In her pocket, she fondly cherishes her biggest trophy: her six months sober chip. So many hours, so many days. Six months and not a single drop of alcohol, not one pill, and all it took was leaving the people she loved behind. Her family, her sister, her friends and her boyfriend. In her heart, Laurel knows it’s not her fault that Oliver and Sara decided to play games behind her back - she knows she’s blameless. And yet, when she lies in her bed at night Laurel wonders why Oliver loved her better when she was broken and she always come to the conclusion that Oliver is the kind of man who can only lovepeople when they need him.

Laurel knows that better than anyone; she chose to study law for that same reason - you always try to fix others when you can’t fix yourself.

Sara’s new kidneys belong to a seventeen years old. Or rather - they did. He dies in the early morning. Final stage brain cancer. Before Sara has to go to the OR, Laurel spends a few minutes with her. She runs her fingers through Sara’s dirty hair and caresses her cheek, grooms her as if she’s helping her baby sister getting ready for prom. There’s a fat chance Sara might die during the surgery, and if she has to go, Laurel wants her to look pretty for whatever or whoever is going to wait for her on the other side.

“I know you like playing games, but try not to this time, yeah?” she whispers to her. “You have to stay with me, Sara. I need you”.

“It’s time, honey” her father says, slowly walking into the room. Two nurses walk in with him.

Laurel nods. She presses her lips on Sara’s forehead.

“Don’t go where I can’t reach you, alright? I love you so, so much, Sara” she says, pressing a kiss to her sister’s cold skin.

Laurel hugs her parents as Sara gets taken away from them once again. The surgery takes hours, so many and long hours that it feels like a lifetime. Laurel wanders around the hospital like a homeless person looking for comfort or shelter. She drinks tons and tons of coffee and eventually she starts to get the shakes; her knee can’t stop bouncing and she keeps biting her nails, so much that she fear she’ll make it to the bone before Sara makes it out of the OR. A nurse comes out every once in a while to tell them that everything’s going fine but that does nothing to ease Laurel’s anxieties. She smokes a few cigarette and tries to eat but her stomach feels like it’s locked.

More than once, she’s tempted to call Oliver and just hear his voice.

She holds her phone in her hand and it burns her skin like hot lava. Her thumb ghosts over Oliver’s number. He probably already knows that Sara got her kidneys. There’s no way someone didn’t spill to the Queens. They know everything that goes on in the city. Oliver might even have something to do with this sudden change of events.

Laurel runs a hand through her hair and locks her phone. Bars and clubs are open, the night is still young. It’s not even dark yet. It’s growing cold, though. If she could, she’d go for some whiskey to warm herself up. Then, perhaps a good bottle of wine for dinner. She could forgo dinner entirely and just skip to the dessert and drinking part. She misses the days when she could do that without feeling any regret. Right now, she just rolls the chip she keeps in her pocket between her fingers and just prays for the withdrawal fits to go away.

It’s late in the evening when they bring Sara back to her room. The doctors say there were a few complications. Apparently Sara nearly died twice. Then they say, the worst’s behind them; a silver lining - the transplant was successful. Sara has now fully functioning kidneys. The nurse tell them no one is allowed in Sara’s room for a few days, to avoid the risk of infections. They watch her from behind the stone cold plexiglass of the ICU. Sara has new scars and new bandages and she looks a little yellow.

Laurel tells her parents to catch some sleep at home.

The next day she wakes up with her spine completely stiff. Her neck hurts, her face still brings the signs of the beating she took during that fist fight at the bar. She presses her hand to the plexiglass that divides her from her sister.

In the pale morning light, a small, yellow canary softly flies by and lands right outside of Sara’s window. 

The canary comes back the next day, and the day after that. Every morning, at the same time, the small yellow canary stays for a few minutes at Sara’s windows, before flying away and carrying on with its day. Laurel jokes that only Sara could manage to make a friend while unconscious. One week after the surgery they’re finally allowed back into Sara’s room. The doctors say they’re monitoring her really closely because the risk of infection or, even worse, rejection, is very high. Sara is still so pale and cold. Her skin is slowly turning grey. She’s pumped full of meds and the more you look at her the more thin she becomes. Laurel hates seeing her baby sister like this.

Some times, at the darkest of night, when everything is deep in silence and still, Laurel just want to grab a pillow and smother Sara in her sleep to put her out of her misery.

On Friday Moira Queen visits. She awkwardly hangs on the threshold of Sara’s room with flowers in her hands (Laurel is seriously starting to despise flowers), until Quentin tells her to come in. Sara was ten when Laurel started to date Oliver and it was all new for her. She’d never had another man around the house that wasn’t her dad. Some times Laurel would bring her to the Queens’ place when she visited Oliver and Sara would spend time with Thea, playing in the backyard. Moira watched her grow and flourish like her own daughter and she watched Sara discover herself and take down a path of destruction like her older sister, hanging out with the wrongest people, dating petty juvenile criminals and pick-pockets, pot-dealers who brought her alcohol and let her into bars. Like everyone else, she didn’t raise a finger - because Laurel and Sara weren’t her daughters and now her own precious daughter is in the grave and Sara is in a coma and Laurel is a recovering addict and alcoholic.

All the what ifs that keep her up at night now, will keep her up at night for the rest of her life - as it should be.

Laurel leaves the room. She has no intention of joining in the pity party that’s about to go down between Moira and her parents. Honestly, she’s not strong enough to face it. She goes to the cafeteria, drinks some horrible coffee, eats some even worse pizza that tastes like cardboard.

She checks the time on her phone. Moira stays for about thirty minutes. Laurel sees her as she’s leaving, walking down the stairs toward the exit. She bites her lip and then runs after Oliver’s mother. She doesn’t know what she’s gonna tell her, she just knows she has to talk to her.

“Moira, wait”.

Oliver’s mother turns to look at her and then gestures to her driver to wait for just a few moments.

“Laurel” Moira says.

“Hello” Laurel says, and then, she doesn’t know what else to say. Her head is empty, no thoughts, only dried up emotions, nostalgia and bitterness.

They look at each other - two women destroyed. Laurel swallows, running a hand through her hair.

“I know you told Oliver that you didn’t want anything to do with us, and I understand, but I thought-. Forgive me if I overstepped” Moira says.

“It’s alright” Laurel quickly replies. She tries to smile.

They’re stalling again.

“I’m sorry for what Oliver did to you” Moira goes on. “If I had known…”.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference” Laurel replies. “Sara is stubborn. She always gets what she wants. She would’ve gotten on the Gambit anyway”.

And Oliver would’ve never tried to dissuade her from going. This, they both know, and there’s no need to even say it out loud. Moira knows her son and Laurel knows Oliver. Each one of them is guilty of something. No one ever dies an innocent.

“I wanted to come to the funeral. For Thea, but-”.

Moira grabs her hand, hold it in between hers. Her smile is shy, her eyes a little watery as she think of her daughter.

“Thea had a good, albeit short life. As a parent, it is incredibly unfair to see your child pass before you, but I know that Thea was very much loved” Moira says. “She was planning on visiting you for you birthday, maybe throwing you a small party”.

Laurel smiles. Partying was one of the many things Thea loved and the main reason that had brought her and Tommy together to open their club. Thea was such a happy person. She was at that point in her life when she was just living day by day; she didn’t yet have an idea about what her future was gonna be and Laurel often wonders what kind of woman Thea would’ve grown to be.

“You can tell Oliver he can come visit Sara, if he wants” Laurel says.

“I will”.

“Thank you for stopping by”.

Moira nods. “Of course. Goodbye, Laurel”.

The driver hold the car’s door open for Moira and she thanks him with a small gesture. Laurel watches as the black car slowly drives away into the parking lot and then disappears among the other vehicles.

It’s sunset - the most magical moment of the day. Laurel wishes Sara could see it. There will be other sunsets, anyway, and Laurel is going to make sure that Sara doesn’t miss any.

Laurel doesn’t exactly expect Oliver to show up exactly two days later Moira’s visit, and she can’t exactly deny that it is a welcomed visit. He’s trying. He shows up with his best shirt and his beard well trimmed, his hair clean and freshly washed; he knocks and asks if he can come in, and he’s fucking trying to be a better person, to make up for being an asshole. Laurel appreciates but in her mind, she doubts it will ever be enough.

Nonetheless, she smiles at him and tells him to come in.

“See, I didn’t bring anything this time” he says.

Laurel bites her lip.

“If I see one more flower I might have a stroke” she jokes, gesturing to the the dozens of vases hanging around Sara’s room. Some are from her friends, then there’s Moira, and the usual compositions her mother brings around every once in a while just to make the room a little more lively.

“Yes, it is pretty colourful in here” Oliver agrees.

“One of Sara’s friends smuggled molly among the tulips” Laurel says, pointing to the red flowers in the right corner. “Nate Heywood, if I had to guess”.

“Oh, the one majoring in Archeology, right?”

“History _and_ Archeology, yes”.

Oliver grins.

“Sit” Laurel tells him.

Oliver grabs a chair, the red one, the one Quentin usually sits on. He brings it closer to Sara’s bed and sits down. Laurel’s right on the other side. For the first time in their lives, Sara is what is setting them apart, separating them from on another. Oliver stares at Sara. The last memory he has of her is of Sara screaming bloody murder as the tide took her away. He remembers trying to reach for her hand, Sara screaming his name, scared and crying. He failed her. He told her to come with him on the Gambit. He brought her right to her dead. That night, he fucked her on his bed, Laurel’s little sister, and then he let her drown.

“How-. I mean, is she…?” he stutters, running a hand through his hair.

“She’s fine, mostly” Laurel says. “They gave her med for her seizures, so she hasn’t had any in a while. One of her transplant’s wounds is a little infected - she bled through the stitches a few times, but they say it should go away in a few days”.

Laurel runs her fingers through Sara’s hair, smiling down at her sister as if Sara could smile back at her. Her knuckles slowly caress Sara’s cheek, rubbing her skin, trying to get her to warm up a little.

“Her vitals are good but she still has minimal brain activity”.

Oliver nods, rubbing his forehead.

“Did they say if she’s gonna wake up?” He asks.

“We don’t know if she’s gonna wake up, Ollie” Laurel sighs. “She might. She’s still heavily sedated but-. If she does wake up, she might not be able to walk or talk or be aware, it’s-. Some times I wish she was just brain dead so we could let her go”.

Oliver swallows.

“I’m so sorry” he says, covering his face with his hands. He’s crying. “Laurel, I’m so sorry, I-”.

“Stop” she replies, interrupting him. “Stop fucking saying it. Every time you apologize, it’s a reminder of what you did, and I just can’t, alright? I just-. I get it, but stop fucking saying it, Oliver”.

“Okay” he nods, wiping his eyes.

He stays and they talk about everything and about nothing. It feels different. After all, everything _is_ different. They could still go on and talk for hours, but many of the words they say are empty. The bond is severed, broken. They’re on uncharted territory, struggling under unlucky stars. Every step they take toward the other might be the wrong one. Oliver is a welcome but annoying presence all at the same time. Laurel wants him gone, and yet she wants him to stay. She wants to kiss him and she wants to hurt him. And that’s the story of Laurel’s life - wanting, not wanting. She didn’t want Sara when she was born, and now she can’t imagine a life without her sister. She wanted to stop with the drugs and the alcohol, and at the same time she couldn’t quite live without either. Laurel stares at Oliver in front of her - he’s sitting far away from Sara’s bed, careful not to touch her, and she wonders what’s going to happen to the both of them. She has no idea about what she wants.

Quentin arrives around 6:30 pm, at the end of his shift. He stares daggers at Oliver but doesn’t say anything. However, Oliver understands that it’s clearly time for him to go. Laurel decides to walk him to his car, despite her father’s eyes clearly being in disagreement with her.

Oliver only recently, and after many exhausting conversations with his therapist, took up driving again. In the first few months after the accident, he’d been too unstable and unreliable to even be near a vehicle, his PTSD making him act out in the most inconvenient situations. He says he’s doing kind of good, now. He still has nightmares most of the nights and can’t really bring himself to spend much time into Thea’s room or inside Tommy’s office at Verdant, but he says therapy’s been helping him a lot.

“And how are you doing?” he asks.

Laurel shrugs, leaning on the hood of his black Audi.

“I’m fine” she says. “As soon as Sara rides out this infection, I’m going back to rehab to finish the program”.

“That’s good” Oliver nods. “Any plans for the foreseeable future?”.

“I want to finish my internship - the one I started before going to rehab, remember?”.

“Of course” Oliver says.

“After that, I want to start studying for my bar exam”.

Oliver smiles. “ADA Dinah Laurel Lance. Always sounded good to me” he says. “You’ll make it. Just don’t go too hard on Sara’s friends and their molly”.

Laurel grins. She bites her lip, trying not to laugh. She runs a hand through her hair, and quickly looks around, scans the crowd for some known face. She wants to kiss Oliver, and whenever she feels like that, Laurel always looks around as if scared that someone she knows might pop up at some point and just start yelling at her that she’s making a disgusting mistake - her therapist says that’s her conscience speaking. Fuck conscience. Fuck everything, except for this moment right here, except for what she’s feeling right now.

Laurel gets up on her tiptoes, places her hands on Oliver’s chest, and kisses him. He kisses her back immediately, without even thinking about it twice. She bites him, holds his bottom lip in between her teeth as Oliver’s hands slowly thread through her hair, playing with a few wild strands, his nails softly scratching at the back of her skull. Laurel sucks his tongue in her mouth, before pushing him away a little. She licks her lips, tastes him in her mouth.

“Laurel” Oliver says, placing his forehead against hers.

“Nothing’s ever gonna be the same between us” she whispers. “We’re not the same. We can never go back. Every time I look at you, I see you with Sara - my baby sister. I see you touching her, kissing her, fucking her, while I was away, alone, struggling, throwing up all over myself, shaking on my bed”.

“Laure, I-”.

“Shh” she interrupts him, pressing two fingers to his mouth. “Be quiet, now. There’s a part of me that can’t stand you, and the other one that still wants you and I don’t know what to do about that”.

“If sex is all you want from me, you can take it” Oliver says. “If you want to hurt me, you can”.

Laurel kisses him again, a quick peck against his lips.

“I don’t know what I want” she confesses. “This whole situation - it defies me completely. I don’t know if we will ever be okay again, so let’s just-. Let’s just take it one day at a time, yeah?”.

Oliver smiles. “It sounds good to me”.

“Yeah” Laurel nods, pulling away from him, from his body, his scent, his arms that are like a prison and the most beautiful place to be at the same time. “Go, now. I’ll see you”.

“I’ll see you, Laurel” Oliver nods, smiling.

She doesn’t stay to watch him go; she has more urgent things to attend to - being at Sara’s side has never been more important.

They say that when women go through changes in their lives, they cut their hair - and that’s the most stupid cliche but it’s also not entirely wrong. It’s Friday when Laurel cuts all of her beautiful long hair and bleaches it. The Laurel that looks back at her in the mirror it’s a stranger, someone else who’s lived inside of her for years without her even knowing. This new Laurel hardened by betrayal and hurt - she’s tougher, stronger and she stands proud because she survived, against all odds.

She doesn’t stop at her hair.

Next, she pierces her nose much to her mother’s disapproval and her father’s reluctance. The ring hangs in between her nostrils and even though she knows that she will probably have to take it off once she actually becomes a lawyer (because she _will_ become a fucking lawyer), it’s good for now. It’s what she needs right in this moment, and what she wants.

The last thing she does is getting a tattoo. She remembers being with Ollie when he got his tribal on his chest, but she never actually felt the appeal of getting a tattoo before. Like everything else, that also changed. She choses the spot where it hurts the most because this is the good pain, and Laurel needs to feel every inch of it. After a few hours, when it’s done, her collarbone is all red and it fucking hurts, but when she looks at herself in the mirror, Laurel smiles.

Laurel skims the lines of the fresh ink on her skin - two canaries, one black and one white, hold each other close in their nest, because they, too, made it in the end.

“I never actually realised how nice it is here” Oliver says, looking out of the window.

It is odd to see him walk around in her room at the rehab center. When he used to come visit her, they always hanged outside. Having him inside her room felt too personal, back then, too intimate; she didn’t want to let him into the most vulnerable part of herself. He’s here now, though.

Sara rode out her infection. She’s healthy, now, for how much someone who drowned and is currently in a coma can be healthy. Laurel’s back in rehab. She only has a few months left here, and then, that’s when the real work being, when she’s going to really have to sweat and prove to herself that she can make it - when she won’t have someone monitoring her 24/7. She will have to keep attending AA meetings and see her therapist and deal with actually making a life for herself without cracking under the pressure, resisting all temptations and her own weaknesses. Laurel doesn’t know exactly how she’s going to do that yet, but what she knows, is that she’s definitely going to try her best to make it.

She looks at Oliver. He always looked uneasy being here with her and the rest of the addicts; now, he’s smiling at her and at everyone else and he’s walking around the room, asking her things about rehab and this and that, and he’s amazed at how pretty the garden is outside as if his family doesn’t own an excessively expensive backyard back at the manor.

“It is nice” Laurel nods.

Oliver sits down at the feet of her bed. His fingers graze her knee, before he quickly retracts his hand.

“I’m sorry I didn’t visit you more often, you know, before” he says.

“It’s okay” Laurel shrugs. “It’s not easy being here”.

“Still” Oliver replies, “I should’ve done better, show you more support. I was a dickhead”.

“You were” Laurel agrees. “I thought you were ashamed of me”.

“I wasn’t, Laurel” he says, “Please know that. I was, for how idiotic it sounds, offended - I thought you didn’t trust me enough to let me help you”.

“You couldn’t have helped me” Laurel replies. “I’m an addict and an alcoholic, Ollie. Love can’t heal me”.

Oliver nods. “I know that now” he says. “You save yourself. I know you don’t care about me saying it but I’m proud of you. You’re the strongest person I know”.

He’s right. She doesn’t care. Nonetheless, Laurel smiles at him and thanks him.

Oliver says he likes her new look. He was a little thrown, at first, like everyone, but his idea changed very quickly. He says he loves the tattoo and he doesn’t ask the meaning of it, because it’s pretty clear. He looks at her like he’s finding her out for the first time, like he’s relearning her all over again. They’re both brand new and old at the same time. They know each other, and yet it’s like they’re meeting for the first time.

Laurel runs a hand trough her short hair. Oliver’s is longer than hers, now and that’s kind of funny. She bites her lip and brings her knees to her chest. He will need to go soon. Time for visits it’s almost over.

“Did that hurt?” He asks, pointing at her nose.

Laurel shakes her head. “Not really” she answers. “Do you like it?”.

Oliver grins, nodding. “I do. I like it very, very much”.

He’s being all cheeky and flirty and Laurel would lie if she’d said it wasn’t working. She’s always been faster and more witty, though, and if this is the game they’re playing, she’s going to win.

“Come here” she tells him, patting the empty spot on her small bed.

Oliver crawls at her side, his legs hanging off the bed. He lies down on his side right next to her. They’re way too closer, the bed not big enough for the both of them. Laurel can’t really complain, honestly. It is nice to have a warm body right next to her, after so much time spent being lonely.

“Can you get me off?” She whispers in his ear, dragging his hand in between her legs.

“Uhm…” Oliver says, running his thumb down the seam of her jeans.

“If you want to”.

“I do” he replies immediately, kissing her cheek. His eyes quickly take a pick at the bedroom’s door.

“It’s locked” Laurel assures him, because Felicity is a little menace and Laurel knows that she locked the door behind her when she left after Oliver arrived earlier.

“Okay” Oliver replies, smiling, placing his hand on her stomach.

Laurel quickly undoes her jeans and pushes her pants down along with her panties, making room just enough for Oliver’s hand to sneak in between her thighs. She doesn’t want him to tease her or drag this out too long, and he gets it. His fingers swiftly swipe down her slit. She’s already so wet. He presses two fingers to her clit, slowly rubbing it and Laurel raises her hips a little, closing her eyes and biting her lip. She sighs, gripping his wrist with her hand. Oliver bends down with his head and kisses her cheek again. He wants her mouth, Laurel knows that, but he doesn’t dare to ask. It’s time for him to earn things, now. Laurel’s not going to give him anything.

She bends her knees, spreading her legs a little wider to give him a better angle and Oliver slips two finger inside of her, his thumb still circling her clit. She’s so close, already. His scent, his warmth - Laurel turns her face away from him, because she doesn’t need to see him, she doesn’t need him at all, she just needs to feel good. She pants a little, gripping Oliver’s wrist harder and possibly hurting him. If she does, he doesn’t say. His tongue softly laps at her neck and his fingers thrust in and out of her at a steady pace.

“Another one” she tells him, knowing she’s wet enough to take even four of his fingers if she really wanted.

Oliver hums against her skin. His fingers slip out and then crawl back inside and Laurel feels the sweet, sweet stretching of her muscles and she has to bite her tongue. She trashes on the bed a little, dripping on the sheets, and she turns her face, pants right into Oliver’s mouth, bites the side of his spiky jaw. His fingers thrust into her faster, and his thumb works her clit just right. Laurel swings her hips a little, pushing back against him, trying to get some more friction.

“You’re so fucking beautiful” Oliver says, pressing his mouth to her chin, “the prettiest girl in the whole damn world. I love you, Laurel”.

Laurel smiles, and when she opens her eyes to look at him, Oliver’s already staring at her, with his eyes full of lust and love that will take time to be rekindled but that it’s still there nonetheless. She comes, clenching around his fingers and fully pressing herself down on his hand, trying to feel him as deep as she can. Oliver touches her through it, softly rubbing her clit and curling his fingers inside of her until Laurel has to push his hand away, her body too sensitive to bear any further stimulation.

Laurel licks her lips, catching her breath, as Oliver brings his own fingers to his mouth. Laurel grins, pushing herself up on her elbow to kiss him, biting his lip, tasting herself on his mouth. She can tell that he’s hard in his pants, and she could get him off with her hand or her mouth, but she really doesn’t feel like it, and he doesn’t ask.

Laurel pulls up her pants and underwear and takes a look at the alarm clock on her nightstand.

“Time for you to go” she says.

They walk together trough the garden to the parking lot. Laurel shoves her hands in her pockets. In between her legs, she’s all sticky and wet, and it makes her feel like she’s back in high school, really feeling her body for the first time.

“How are things at the Company?” She asks.

Oliver sighs. “Dad had lots of debts” he says, “but mom is trying to make it work. Doesn’t help that our IT guy nearly fried our whole net the other day”.

“Really?” Laurel giggles.

“Yep. Mom might have to fire him soon”.

“So you need a new technician”.

Oliver nods. Laurel bites her lip, turning to look at the small garden at her back. Felicity is hanging out at one of the tables under the patio, enjoying some shade and playing cards with Barry, one of the center’s latest recruits who’s most definitely not having a good day, seeing how he’s fidgeting and shaking all over the place.

“Come with me” she tells Oliver. “I know just the right person for the job”.

He follows right behind her. When she sees them coming, Felicity quickly drops her cards on the table as if she’s being caught doing something illegal.

“Felicity” Laurel starts, “this is Oliver Queen. Ollie, this is Felicity Smoak, MIT class of ’09, summa cum laude. She’s the best IT I’ve ever met, right?”.

“Uh, t-technically I’m an hack-”.

“Right?” Laurel repeats, raising her eyebrows at her friend.

“R-Right” Felicity nods, twisting a strand of black hair around her finger.

“Nice to meet you, Felicity” Oliver says, holding his hand out. Felicity shakes it, a little awkwardly ‘cause apparently she’s never learned to be anything but a little awkward in her life. Laurel finds it cute.

“Ollie needs a new IT for his family’s industries” Laurel explains.

“That’s cool” Felicity nods.

“Laurel says you’re the best” Oliver says, smiling. “Maybe you could help us out?”.

“Yeah, sure - I mean, I would, but I’m not gonna be out of her for at least the next three months, so…” Felicity explains.

“That’s okay” Oliver replies. “You can come for an interview as soon as you get out”.

Felicity opens her mouth a few times. “That’s, I mean…” she stutters, before turning to Laurel. “Is he for real?”.

Laurel laughs. “He is”.

“I am” Oliver confirms. “We desperately needs someone who actually knows what they’re doing”.

“Alright, then” Felicity smiles. “I’m in”.

Oliver pulls a card out of his wallet and gives it to her. It doesn’t even have his number on it but the one of his mother’s assistant. He tells Felicity to call whenever she feels ready. Then, Oliver turns to look at Laurel. She gives him a hug, running a hand through his hair.

“I’ll see you next week” he says.

“Bring ice-cream”.

“Will do” he smiles, before waving goodbye and walking back to his car.

Laurel jumps up on the bench and sits down right next to Felicity, in front of Barry. She grabs the deck of cards on the table and starts shuffling it. Felicity slides closer to her and sniffs the air a little.

“You smell” she says.

“Shut up” Laurel replies, shoving her away with her elbow as she hands Barry his cards.

“Get some dick, _queen_ ” he jokes, his voice shaking just as much as his hands.

Laurel slaps the back of his neck, but she’s smiling. They start playing. First turn is hers, of course.

It’s summer again.

The air is warm, everything is sticky, all the surfaces burn. Laurel wishes she could spend all of her time at the beach, but she’s finally done with her internship and her bar exam is just around the corner. Plus, there’s Sara to take care of. There’s a faint but present hope. The doctors say that Sara’s vitals are good and that they’re going to try to gradually take her off sedatives to see if she wakes up.

It still hasn’t happened yet, but Laurel has faith.

She’s done with rehab, and she’s back at home, but she goes back every week to spend a few hours with Felicity. Laurel divides her time in between studying and watching over Sara. She spends most of her nights in the hospital. In the little spare time that she has she picks up a few gym classes, boxing and self defence mostly, to let out some steam and rage and frustration so that she doesn’t have to think about drinking or pills - she _always_ thinks about drinking, but throwing punches definitely helps her take her mind off of it for a while.

And then there’s Oliver.

She can’t exactly say that they’re on a good place; they fight often and some times Laurel just wants to punch him right in the face and yell at him and hurt him, and yet, they do have some kind of relationship - or at least, they’re trying to build a new one. Laurel tries to make time for the two of them. Some times they fuck back in his room at the manor or have quick hook ups at her house when her parents are out, with most of their clothes still on; other times they just spend a few hours together, watching movies and eating ice-cream and talking about Sara’s recovery and Queen Industries and her lawyer exam, or they have more serious conversations about their feelings and what happened on the Gambit and they always end up crying and blaming each others and saying horrible things, before working things out, wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

They try to make space for each other in their new lives, and in such a predicament, this is all that they can do and it’s enough - for now.

Oliver takes her out for breakfast. He picks a nice little place not too far away from the hospital so that he can easily drop her off once they’re done. Laurel sips her cup of coffee. It’s a sunny day, hot but windy. Oliver is sitting right in front of her, black t-shirt and ripped jeans. He definitely needs to shave, but Laurel doesn’t tell him because she likes him like this. He offers her some of his pancakes, pushing the plate towards her. Laurel takes a bite.

“So, did you decide what to do with the Company? Should I start calling you CEO Oliver Queen?” Laurel asks.

Oliver laughs, shaking his head. “Absolutely not” he says. “We decided to bring on a new CEO”.

Laurel frowns. “Your mother sold the Company?”.

“Kind of” Oliver replies. “She still has her share and she’s still on the board but yeah… she’s not exactly in charge anymore, and I called myself out”.

“Wow” Laurel says. “Who’s the new guy?”.

“A woman, actually” Oliver explains. “Her name is Talia al-Ghul. She’s frankly quite scary and ruthless but she’s the best at her job. She owns lots of companies in Asia and the Middle East and she gets along with mom, so…”.

“Do you like her?”.

Oliver shrugs. “She’s a cutthroat but she does her job very efficently. I’ll warm up to her, eventually”.

Laurel nods, picking up her mug.

“What about you?, now that your father’s businesses are settled”.

Oliver smiles. “Remember my friend Diggle?” he asks, and Laurel nods. “He’s been discharged from the Army some time ago and owns this gym/trining facility with his wife - he asked me to become partner. And I’ll keep supervising at Verdant, of course”.

(Oliver had relinquishes the club’s management to Tommy’s father, Malcolm, who’d still decided to keep his late son’s best friend on the loop anyway).

“Look at that” Laurel smiles. “Finally putting that business degree to use, I see”.

Oliver laughs, nodding. “You’ll have to come throw a few punches with us some time”.

“You can count on that” Laurel says, flexing her arm. “I’ll beat your ass”.

“Can’t wait” Oliver grins.

Oliver drives her to the hospital after a small walk. He stays for only a few minutes, just the time to help her take care of the flowers in Sara’s room. In the hallway, her hugs her so close it almost hurt and it is frankly uncomfortable in the sticky summer weather, but Laurel doesn’t complain. She hold him even tighter to her. She runs a hand through his hair, and then steps up on her tiptoes to gently kiss his cheek, first, and then his lips. Just a quick, sweet peck.

She waves him goodbye before going back inside Sara’s room.

“Wow, your hair is getting really long, Sar” Laurel says, running a hand through Sara’s blood and messy hair, trying to make a sense of it. “I’ll braid it later, yeah? Right now, though, we have some studying to do”.

She take a huge book out of her backpack, along with a pencil.

“I know you hate it, you lazy ass, but we have just five more chapters to go, so bear with me” Laurel says. “All right, today we have… Real Property. How fun”.

Laurel starts reading and she reads for what feesl like hours. With time, she’s grown used to the silence and to the beep of the machines in the room. Nothing much ever happens in the ICU. Time goes slower. Everything is different here. One of Sara’s nurse told her once, during one of the many moment of sadness she’s had, that if miracles actually happen - they always happen in the ICU. He told her to have faith. 

And Laurel had faith and after so many empty prayers and pleads and desperation, eventually someone answered. 

Laurel doesn’t know what it is - a different smell or breeze, a sudden change of air, a sixth sense or just a simple feeling in her guts, that pushes her to look up at Sara.

Only this time Sara is looking back at her.

Her eyes are open - blue pools of ocean, lazily moving left and right, scanning the room and Laurel’s face, trying to get a hold of where she is and what is happening. Laurel’s book falls to the floor. The air’s been punched away from her lungs. Laurel’s not even sure she’s breathing anymore. Sara’s eyes are open and they’re staring at her with such deepness and desperation and will to live.

“Sara?” Laurel whispers.

Sara blinks once like daddy taught them when they were little - once for yes, twice for no.

“Oh my God, Sara” Laurel whispers again, drawing closer to her sister. She knows she should call someone but she needs just a few more seconds, just a little more. “Are you-. Sara, is this for real?”.

Sara blinks once.

“Do you know who I am?”.

One more blink.

“Oh my God” Laurel repeats, and this time she’s crying and Sara is crying too, fresh tears running down her dry skin. Laurel wipes them away with her thumb. “Hey, sssh, don’t cry. It’s okay. You’re okay. Hey, you, welcome back”.

She grabs Sara’s hand. Sara doesn’t squeeze back but Laurel doesn’t expect her to.

“I’ve missed you so much” Laurel whispers, kissing her sister’s forehead.

And then, it’s time to go. Laurel wipes her tears and calls for doctors and nurses and as they take care of Sara, Laurel sits down on the corridor’s floor and calls her parents and she just can’t stop crying, she just can’t, and she cries tears of joy and relief because they made it against all odds and finally -

Finally.

It’s time for everyone to leave the shore.

**Author's Note:**

> *spoilers ahead if you haven't watched season 4 of Arrow*
> 
> I remember my last year of high school when I randomly caught an episode of Arrow on TV. it was Laurel's death scene. that scene stayed with me. the rage I felt at how such a badass character as Black Canary got butchered so easily, along with Katie Cassidy's exceptional portrayal (I see you haters), was what pushed me to watch the entire shit-show; not Oliver's epic romance with Felicity nor his crusade to be a hero - Laurel Lance. I know she might totally come out as OOC in this piece but a real hero, a real survivor, comes in any form and shape. Laurel Lance is mine. her determination, her strenght, her heart, her compassion, I will always take with me, with the hope that at some point strong women won't just be used as an exploit to further the plot but as actual role models. 
> 
> thank you all for reading.
> 
> you can find me [ here.](https://prentissguns.tumblr.com/)


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